Wolfgang Pauli Institute, Vienna

17th Plasma Kinetics Working Meeting
  27 July - 7 August 2026

Organised by Alex Schekochihin (Oxford)
"Programme Committee": Plamen Ivanov (UKAEA), Toby Adkins, Felix Parra (PPPL), Robbie Ewart, Matt Kunz (Princeton), David Hosking (Cambridge)

Name	Affiliation	Wk I	Wk II	h	Seminar Title	Background Reading	Download
Ian Abel	GridFire Ltd	30-	-7	H	General overview of centrifugal mirrors and how they turn into fusion reactors rather than just university experiments
Georgia Acton	IPP Greifswald	26-	-7	o	A weakly nonlinear theory of zonal-flow forcing in gyrokinetic turbulence	arXiv:2606.28154
Toby Adkins	PPPL/Edinburgh	26-	-7	D	Generalised RMHD: putting solar-wind turbulence on an industrial basis
Alessandro Balestri	EPFL	27-31		F	On the interplay between plasma triangularity, aspect ratio, and micro-tearing turbulence in tokamaks	PPCF 67, 105025 (2025) PoP 32, 052302 (2025) PRL 106, 155003 (2011)
Justin Ball	EPFL	27-31		F	Alternative approaches to fusion
Aikya Banerjee	Oxford	26-1		F	What is the resistivity of a box of plasma?
Nicolas Besse	OCA Nice	31-	-15	F	The reduced MHD limit of the compressible MHD for a strongly magnetised and anisotropic plasma: a rigorous justification	J. Math. Pures App. 210, 103877 (2026)
Archie Bott	Oxford	26-31		D	Anomalous transport in in weakly collisional, high-beta plasmas: where do we stand?	JPP 90. 975900207 (2024) JPP 91, E20 (2025) JPP 91, E45 (2025) JPP 91, E136 (2025) PRE 133, 065212 (2026) arXiv:2607.1171
Yann Brenier	Paris-Saclay
Ben Chandran	New Hampshire	28-1		H	Quadratic invariants and the helicity barrier	JPP 87, 535870301 (2021) JPP 85, 905850303 (2018)
Steve Cowley	Princeton/PPPL		1-7	D
Bruno Despres	Sorbonne			F	On the future of hybrid models for transport codes (hybrid model=Neural Nets+classical solver)
Riju Dutta	Oxford	25-	-3	o	Double-diffusive MHD and transport barriers	preprint on request
Robbie Ewart	Stanford	25-	-7	o	1) Anomalous cosmic-ray transport in intermittent CGL-MHD turbulence	Nature Astron. 9, 438 (2025) JPP 90, 535900601 (2024) MNRAS 545, staf2108 (2026)
					2) A tourist's guide to superconducting MHD	PRD 16, 275 (1977) MNRAS 365, 339 (2006) MNRAS 473, 2771 (2018)
Cary Forest	UW Madison/Realta		2-8	H	TBA
Thomas Foster	Princeton	26-	-7	D	Neoclassical transport near rational surfaces in stellarators
Sam Frank	Realta Fusion Inc		2-11	D	Magnetic mirror theory at Realta: recent developments
Zach Hemler	Princeton	31-	-8	F
David Hosking	Cambridge/Edinburgh	26	-7	F	The living HBI	ApJ 673, 758 (2008) ApJ 720, L97 (2010) MNRAS 417, 602 (2011) ApJ 773, 171 (2013)
Plamen Ivanov	UKAEA	26-	-8	F	GK transport of fast electrons (because apparently EM turbulence was not bad enough already)	PRL 88, 205001 (2002) PoP 12, 082511 (2005) PRL 101, 095001 (2008) NF 55, 012002 (2015) NF 64, 106027 (2024)
Archis Joglekar	Ergodic LLC		2-8	H	Give your AI agent a better toolbox: a case study in kinetic simulation
Anjor Kanekar	Platypus Tech Ltd		2-7	H	TBA	arXiv:2511.21891 https://github.com/anjor/gandalf https://github.com/anjor/gandalf-paper https://github.com/anjor/krmhd-research
Philipp Kempski	IST Lisbon	26-1		D	Scatter, trap, repeat: anomalous cosmic-ray transport in large-amplitude MHD turbulence	MNRAS 525, 4985 (2023) ApJL 994, L49 (2025)
Patrick Kim	Princeton	26-1		D	The gyrokinetic plasma-sheath transition	PPCF 60, 125002 (2018) arXiv:2508.09067
Matt Kunz	Princeton	25-	-5	D	1) Collisionless resistivity of firehose-unstable plasma	preprint on request
					2) Solar-wind heating update	arXiv:2606.06340 ApJ 979, 121 (2025) Nat. Astron. 6, 715 (2022) arXiv:2605.25117
Ralf Mackenbach	EPFL		2-8	o	Ground states: constraints from the field equations and unresolved issues	JPP 92, E77 (2026)
Rishin Madan	Princeton	26-1	3-7	F	1) Kinetic-Alfven-wave turbulence: alignment and intermittency?	ApJ 758, L44 (2012)
					2) Tales of phase-space cascades, anomalous diffusion, and holes in ion-acoustic turbulence	arXiv:2503.17278
Inma Foulquie Mauser	U of Vienna & KU Leuven
Michael Nastac	Oxford		2-7	F	Decaying phase-space turbulence and Lagrangian dynamics	PRE 109, 065210 (2024) arXiv:2503.17278 PNAS 122, e2417813122 (2025)
Richard Nies	Oxford	26-31		F	Nonlinear theory of zonal flows: saturation, propagation, and first steps in electromagnetification	PRL 80, 724 (1998) PRL 93, 065001 (2004) PRR 8, 013295 (2026) PPCF 68, 045028 (2026)
Felix Parra	Princeton/PPPL	26-1		H
Bhavin Patel	GridFire Ltd		2-8	D	Equilibria and field reversal limits in centrifugal mirror machines
Chris Reynolds	Maryland	19-1		H
Alex Schekochihin	Oxford	25-	-7	H
Yujia Zhang	UKAEA	26-31		D	Transition to high-flux states in microtearing turbulence due to magnetic island overlap	[arXiv:2606.04616]

Week I
 

Monday 27 July	Tuesday 28 July	Wednesday 29 July	Thursday 30 July	Friday 31 July
9:30 Coffee 9:45 Welcome/self-intros	9:30 Coffee	9:30 Coffee	9:30 Coffee	9:30 Coffee
HIGH-BETA TRANSPORT Bott FUSION FUTURES Ball	TRANSPORT BARRIERS Dutta CR TRANSPORT Kempski	SOLAR WIND Chandran GK SHEATH Kim	ZONAL FLOWS Acton KAW TURBULENCE Madan-1	SOLAR WIND/TRANSPORT Kunz-2 FUSION FUTURES Discussion---TBA
13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...
16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee
ZONAL FLOWS Nies CR TRANSPORT Ewart-1	MICROTEARING Balestri HIGH-BETA RESISTIVITY Banerjee	MICROTEARING Zhang HIGH-BETA RESISTIVITY Kunz-1	HIGH-BETA DYNAMICS Hosking
19:30 Dinner at Sopherl am Naschmarkt	19:30 Dinner at Takan's After dinner: Das 1090	19:30 Dinner at Fischerie After dinner: First Floor	19:30 Dinner at Nanos am Ring After dinner: Krypt	19:30 Dinner at 8o8 After dinner: Krypt

Week II

Monday 3 August	Tuesday 4 August	Wednesday 5 August	Thursday 6 August	Friday 7 August
9:30 Coffee 9:45 Welcome/self-intros	9:30 Coffee	9:30 Coffee	9:30 Coffee	9:30 Coffee
MIRRORS Forest AI/PHASE SPACE Joglekar	MIRRORS Abel PHASE SPACE Madan-2	MIRRORS Frank PHASE SPACE Mackenbach	MIRRORS Patel PHASE SPACE Nastac	AI/TRANSPORT Despres MIRRORS Discussion---Abel & Forest
13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...	13:00 Lunch/work/play Some options: Riva, Scala, ...
16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee	16:00 Coffee
NEOCLASSICS Foster SUPERCONDUCTIVITY Ewart-2	AI/PHASE SPACE Kanekar RUNAWAY TRANSPORT Ivanov	RMHD TRANSPORT Adkins MATHEMATICS OF RMHD Besse	AI Discussion/TBC---Foster, Kanekar & Joglekar
19:30 Dinner at TBA	19:30 Dinner at TBA	19:30 Dinner at TBA	19:30 Dinner at TBA After dinner: Krypt

JPP-CUP Best Student Talk Prize (panel: G. Acton, R. Ewart, P. Ivanov):
TBA

Logistics

City-airport train
Vienna information

Previous WPI workshops in this series: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, (2008), (2007), (2007)