Pedro Lourenço successfully defends PhD thesis
Pedro Lourenço defended his PhD thesis on December 11th 2020 and was awarded the grade Pass with Distinction. Pedro received a fellowship in the scope of the APPLAuSE doctoral program on Plasma Science and Engineering in 2016, when he joined IPFN for his thesis under the supervision of Prof. Horácio Fernandes, Dr. Jorge Santos and Dr. Martin Hron (IPP.CZ).During his PhD, Pedro worked at the COMPASS tokamak in addition to the research work carried out at IPFN. He successfully implemented radial plasma position control on COMPASS tokamak using Plasma Position Reflectometry during the discharge plateau, which required a deep understanding of the COMPASS control system, microwave reflectometry and real-time systems integration. The project resulted in two papers already published, plus another on the way. Pedro also co-authored a physics education article on the European Journal of Physics.
Besides being a founding member of the FuseNet Student Council, Pedro took several teaching assistant positions in Physics Department courses, including Microcontrollers and Electronic Instrumentation where he was ranked by the students as an Excellent Teacher.
