The Austrian Research Unit of the European Fusion Research Programme organises once a year an event called “Fusion Day”. The aim of the event is to provide a space for scientists from all over Austria to meet and share their results.
The Fusion Day was held for the eighth time on November 19, 2021, this time in Graz. Due to the current COVID-19 situation, the Fusion Day was organized for the first time as a hybrid event, with speakers as well as audience members participating both on-site and online.
The event started at 9 a.m. Professor Friedrich Aumayr, the chair of the Austrian Fusion Research Unit and professor at the Vienna University of Technology, welcomed all participants and introduced this year's keynote speaker, Prof. Dr. Per Helander from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. Helander heads the "Stellarator Theory" division at IPP Greifswald. In his talk, titled "Stellarators and the Wendelstein 7-X project", he first introduced the general concept of stellarators and then went into more detail about Wendelstein 7-X, the largest stellarator in the world.
The keynote speech was followed by several 20-minute talks by scientists who presented the research results of their working groups. The Austrian fusion research program comprises 10 research groups from Vienna, Graz, Salzburg, Leoben and Innsbruck.
3 p.m. marked the end of the event. 36 participants (14 online) met this year and had the chance to network and to exchange results. The next Fusion Day will be hosted in Innsbruck or Vienna.