Fusion CDT delegation Travel to South Korea for Collaborative Workshop with KFE
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Following a highly successful first workshop hosted at the Royce Institute in Manchester in 2023, from June 24-27th, 2025, representatives from the EPSRC Doctoral training in Fusion Power and the EPSRC Doctoral training in the Science and Technology of Fusion Energy attended the 2nd KFE Korean Institute of Fusion Energy)–UK Fusion CDT Workshop in Daejeon and Seoul, South Korea.
Figure 1: The start of the workshop! Image courtesy of KFE
After a highly competitive process, we selected 15 staff and students across all our partner universities (York, Liverpool, Manchester, Durham, Sheffield, Oxford) to represent us at the workshop. Their research covered a wide range of disciplines including materials science, plasma physics, superconducting magnets, diagnostics, lasers, tritium, digital engineering and social sciences. Together with our Korean colleagues, over 50 researchers across a range of levels participated in the workshop. We had presentations all the way from 1st year PhD students to the President of KFE, Yeongkook Oh! This was a great way to exchange our research at the grass roots level and build and develop new collaborations. The breadth of the work covered was huge and it was really great to have everyone in the same room sharing ideas.
Figure 2: Presentation time! Image courtesy of KFE.
Workshop highlights included an exciting tour of the KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research) tokamak at KFE, a tour of Seoul National University, including the student-led ‘VEST’ (Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus ) device, a debriefing session at the British Embassy in Seoul, and the absolutely fantastic KFE merch, including a lego KSTAR!
Figure 3: Our tour around the KSTAR tokamak. Image courtesy of Joel Adams
Figure 4: The KFE mascot
Figure 5: The VEST tokamak at Seoul National University. Image courtesy of Joel Adams
Figure 6: Our visit to the British Embassy in Seoul! Image courtesy of Hyoin Lee
All our staff and students left the workshop, highly inspired and many new connections were made. One of our Fusion Power CDT students, Deborah Selemon said,
‘The KFE-CDT workshop was a rich and valuable experience for me. It was impressive to see the range of facilities across the institutes we visited. The lab tours were a highlight, and I found the student-built tokamak at Seoul National University especially inspiring. It was great to make connections and have conversations around collaborating on microwave diagnostics relevant for future fusion machines. And beyond the science, the cultural exchange was lovely – from the food to the kindness of the people, it was all incredibly memorable.’.
It was a real privilege and honour to learn and exchange ideas with our fantastic Korean colleagues. Following the workshop, we are planning to develop a bilateral document highlighting facilities in the UK and Korea that can be accessed by staff and students in both countries.
We would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to our absolutely incredible hosts at KFE, Woong Chae Kim and JaeOk Kim for organizing such a memorable event. Thanks also to our wonderful hosts Hyoin Lee (who visited us earlier in the year in Manchester) and Jessica Cope at the British Embassy in Seoul. Finally, a huge thanks to our wonderful staff (especially delegation organiser’s Dr. Aneeqa Khan and Dr. Kirsty McKay) and students, who made this such a memorable trip and did a great job representing the Fusion CDT’s!
Watch this space for more collaborations!