Highlights
- THOR consortium — co-founded EUREKA project with Łukasiewicz IMiF, COFFEEBPM, and Poznan University of Technology: graphene-on-SiC Hall sensors for magnetic diagnostics in reactor-grade plasma.
- Antoine Sirinelli joins — 20+ years of fusion diagnostics at JET and ITER; now Head of Diagnostics and Instrumentation, leading diagnostics development for the MDP.
- MDP on ITER's stage — our CTO Georgy Subbotin presented the Modular Diagnostics Platform at the ITER Public-Private Fusion Workshop.
News & Updates
- THORWe co-founded the THOR consortium (Three-Dimensional Sensor Head for Magnetic Diagnostics in Thermonuclear Reactors) together with Łukasiewicz – Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics, joined by COFFEEBPM and Poznan University of Technology, under the EUREKA Network Programme. THOR develops a graphene-on-SiC Hall sensor platform for measuring magnetic fields inside reactor-grade plasma — operating up to ~770 K, resistant to fast-neutron irradiation, and able to recover its transport properties through thermal treatment after neutron exposure. THOR will form the magnetic diagnostics layer of our Modular Diagnostics Platform, with a validated prototype expected to start demonstrating its advantages in 2027.
- TeamWe welcomed Antoine Sirinelli to Next Step Fusion as Head of Diagnostics and Instrumentation. Antoine brings over 20 years of fusion diagnostics experience — seven at JET and thirteen at the ITER Organization — spanning everything from microwave reflectometers to leading the full laser and microwave diagnostics team. At Next Step Fusion he will lead microwave and other diagnostics development within our Modular Diagnostics Platform. Welcome aboard!
- ITER WorkshopOur CTO Georgy Subbotin presented our Modular Diagnostics Platform at the ITER Organization Public-Private Fusion Workshop. ITER's stage was a fitting place to speak about the MDP — in many ways it is inspired by Georgy's prior work for ITER and numerous discussions with ITER's (and not only) experts.
- LEGO TokamakOur own Eduard Khairutdinov built a LEGO tokamak — not a one-off, but a serial model designed with the LEGO Group Builder as a standardized solution that can be quickly delivered and assembled from a clear instruction. (We wish real tokamaks were like that!) A vacuum vessel, magnetic coils, plasma inside — elegant enough to read at a glance, complex enough to remind you that even the simplest ideas are serious engineering puzzles. We ran a giveaway on LinkedIn and three winners received their sets — more to come, so follow us there.
- EventsIn Q2 2026 we participated and presented at industry events and workshops including the Fusion Supply Chain Trade Show in Santa Fe, EPS 2026 in Edinburgh, HTPD and FusionX Invest in Boston, the 23rd Joint Workshop on Electron Cyclotron Emission and Resonance Heating (EC-23), Belgian Fusion Day 2026, the 17th International Reflectometry Workshop (IRW17), and more. Posters and slides are available on our Scientific Publications page.
- TRUST ProjectOur UK Director Michele Romanelli, Senior Researcher Mikhail Drabinskiy, and CEO Aleksei Zolotarev visited Università degli Studi della Tuscia to advance our collaboration under the TRUST Project — and to bring plasma physics and tokamak design and engineering directly into the classroom. Together with Tuscia, we aim to make TRUST not only an educational device but also a testing facility relevant to the growing fusion industry.
Current Opportunities
- We are actively looking for diagnostics solutions supply chain companies and labs to discuss how we can leverage their experience and solutions in building the Modular Diagnostics Platform. Get in touch.
- We invite all private and public MCF device builders to start working on their diagnostics together with us. Reach out — let's build something great.
Useful Links
- Dynamic Plasma Shape Control with Arbitrary Sensor Subsets — our preprint (under review): an RL agent trained in NSFsim that tracks dynamic shape targets with arbitrary sensor subsets, demonstrated in simulation and on the physical device
- Limit-informed pedestal modeling using a surrogate model for MHD stability code MISHKA — a blog post on our integrated modeling framework
- NSFsim: What's the novelty in our tokamak simulator — a blog post on what sets NSFsim apart
- Plasma confinement state classification in fusion power plants: Profile reflectometer and ensemble diagnostics — published in Nuclear Fusion with collaborators at UC San Diego and UCLA
- HDF5 Viewer — our free, open-source, backend-free tool for browsing HDF5 files and building customizable dashboards — everything runs locally, no data leaves your computer. In Q2 it received bug fixes and a big update: automatic dashboard creation for known HDF5 file schemas.
- Poloidal field coils optimization for the MANTA tokamak using TokaMaker — we are not among the authors, but we are happy this research was done and proud to have supported and funded it