PlasmaSurf 2026 - July 12-18
Marina Gonzalez Marquez was one of the few people in the nuclear fusion group at the University of Seville who had not yet taken part in PlasmaSurf. After hearing her colleagues recommend the experience, she joined this year’s edition of the event organised by IPFN.
Over one week, the Spanish student attended lectures on topics such as plasmas, nuclear fusion and lasers, including plasma physics, diagnostic techniques, laser-plasma interaction and the ITER project, all closely connected to IPFN’s research activities. The scientific programme was combined with outdoor activities including climbing, mountainboarding, kayaking and surfing, alongside 43 higher education students from 21 nationalities.
“I loved the opportunity to explore new things,” she shared during a break between lectures. She also had the chance to meet people from different parts of the world, particularly from Europe. “I can go work in places like Germany, the Czech Republic or Italy and have people I can contact to help me adapt to these new places,” she explained.
The benefits of participating in the programme can extend beyond the week itself, as explained by Horácio Fernandes, Técnico Professor and coordinator of the ISTTOK tokamak and the Experimental Physics Group. The programme includes an online component that allows some enrolled students to access additional lectures and remotely operate two experiments, enabling them to complete 3 ECTS for their academic curriculum.
Originally from the University of Malta, Martina Muscat discovered the programme through professors from her Mechanical Engineering course. Although plasma physics is not her main field, she wanted to take the opportunity to expand her technical knowledge while also getting to know Portugal better, a country she had visited before. She did not expect to have the chance to see IPFN’s tokamak and even take a group selfie on the beach with former Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
Riccardo Cadoni would “definitely recommend that colleagues experience PlasmaSurf”. For the Nuclear Engineering student at the Polytechnic University of Turin, the group of participants “is excellent – we are all young, we are all here with the same goal, and we are having a lot of fun around Lisbon”. His favourite topics covered during the PlasmaSurf lectures were precisely those he had not had the opportunity to explore in his degree, such as astrophysics, space plasmas and lasers. “It was good to have a broader view of the areas where plasmas are involved,” he said, although the highlight of the week was something different: “I think I fell in love with climbing – I had never done it before and I want to do it again”.
The week concluded with a visit to IPFN’s experimental facilities, including the ISTTOK tokamak, the Plasma Engineering Laboratory (PEL) and the Magneto-Optical-Trap Laboratory (MOTLab), where participants had the opportunity to learn more about the experimental work developed at the institute.
Adapted from the original article published by Instituto Superior Técnico.
