Engagement with Fusion Energy Sciences Researchers
June 2024
The HPDF Project team was recently invited to participate in two Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) Principal Investigator (PI) meetings in Norfolk Virginia as part of the Project’s user experience and engagement efforts. The first was Program Manager Matthew Lanctot’s Advanced and Long Pulse Tokamaks PI Meeting June 17-18. The second was Program Manager Michael Halfmoon’s PI Meeting for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) June 20-21.
Amber Boehnlein (Project Director), Graham Heyes (Technical Director), and Drew Paine (User Experience & Engagement Researcher) represented the HPDF Project team at these meetings to:
- Socialize current plans and concepts for fusion energy sciences community feedback
- Identify high-level community needs to inform project requirements
- Foster opportunities for ongoing engagement and collaboration
Amber Boehnlein gave a plenary presentation at the Tokamaks meeting on the HPDF Project’s Status and Plans. Audience members in person and virtually expressed excitement about the facility project and indicated that they hope HPDF will be able to help their community over the long-term. The HPDF team also spent the meeting engaged with the community as part of a breakout session focused on Research Infrastructure for the FES community. This all-day breakout delved into the community’s existing data challenges and workflows. Discussions also identified various opportunities where a data facility could be of service to the fusion energy sciences community, particularly through possible future HPDF Spoke concepts.
In addition, Graham Heyes and Drew Paine presented the Project’s status and plans as a plenary during the AI/ML PI meeting later in the week. After this plenary the audience noted the need for better data curation support in their community, along with increased access to varied experimental data to inform simulation and modeling efforts.
