Ondřej Ficker, a PhD student at the Tokamak Department of IPP, won the Joseph, Maria and Zdeňka Hlávka Foundation Award for talented students up to the age of 33 who have demonstrated exceptional skills and creative thinking in their field.
Ondřej was nominated by the rector of the Czech Technical University for excellent and
original scientific results in the field of thermonuclear fusion. He took the award on November 16,
2021, at the Luzany Chateau. Founded in 1904, the Foundation is the oldest Czech foundation. Along
with the prize, the winners receive a donation of 25,000 CZK.
Ondřej Ficker achieves excellent and original scientific results in the field of thermonuclear
fusion as part of his doctoral studies at the CTU FJFI. He passed the state doctoral exam on
November 23, 2018, with excellent results. Since then, he has been actively involved in the
preparation of experiments and data processing on European tokamaks COMPASS, JET, ASDEX-Upgrade and
TCV. Within the European Research Consortium, EUROfusion, he works as one of the "Scientific
Coordinators" on the topic of electrons passing, in which role he is among the youngest experts in
Europe.
On JET's Common European Tokamak, he is involved in running tokamak in control room shifts as
a diagnostic coordinator and has also been involved in providing shifts covering advanced feedback
on plasma parameters. At JET, he also used pre-existing diagnostic equipment to identify the
synchrotron radiation of passing electrons and align the observed structure with the relevant
models. On the JET tokamak, he also did soft X-ray tomography for analysis of heavy impurities in
the plasma, and for the ITER tokamak, he used tomography to verify the appropriate distribution of
radial neutron camera measurement lines.
Ondřej Ficker is also involved in the design of the new Czech tokamak COMPASS-Upgrade, in
particular the modelling of the bearing structure of tokamak coils and the preparation of neutron
and hard X-ray diagnostics.
As part of the FuseNet European Fusion Education Consortium, Ondřej Ficker is a member
(2018-2021) of the Student Council, which is involved in organising events for high school teachers
(European Fusion Teacher Day) or PhD events (FuseNet PhD event), for example, as well as providing
feedback on the work of European universities.
Ondřej Ficker's most important creative results were published in impacted international
journals and were mainly devoted to the latest results achieved on European tokamaks in the field
of diagnostics of passing electrons and their mitigation, but they also document the PhD student's
broader assumptions for independent work.
Photo: the Josef Hlávka Foundation.
29 Nov 2021
