Plenaries

Brandon Sorbom | Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Brandon Sorbom co-founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems with the goal of commercializing fusion energy in time to combat climate change. As Chief Science Officer, he leads the scientific direction and R&D efforts of the company. In addition, he leads the company’s efforts to advance the design of Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ commercial fusion power plant, ARC. Sorbom is mission-driven to fight climate change and believes that commercial fusion power can be a critical solution. He studied fusion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) because of its massive potential as a limitless clean energy source. While working on his PhD there, Sorbom was the lead author of a paper that proposed the original design for ARC that inspired the founding of Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2028. A regular scientific presenter and academic speaker, Sorbom earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Engineering Physics from Loyola Marymount University and a PhD in Nuclear Science and Engineering from MIT. He was also named a “35 Under 35” Honoree from MIT Technology Review.

Presentation Topic: “Qualification of the HTS Magnets for SPARC”

Seungyong Hahn | Seoul National University

Seungyong Hahn is a superconductor magnet engineer and a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University (SNU). Before joining the department in 2017, he was an Associate Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Florida State University and a group leader of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (2015-2017). He had also worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Research Engineer (2005 – 2015), a Principal Investigator (2010 – 2015), and a lecturer with the Department of Mechanical Engineering of MIT (2011 – 2015). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea and has served the IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity as an Associate Editor since 2017. He has been studying superconducting magnets over 25 years since his graduate school at SNU in late 1990s and is the inventor of the so-called no-insulation high temperature superconductor (HTS) winding technique. Throughout his career, he has published over 200 SCI journal papers, while collaborating with various domestic and international partners on HTS applications such as MRI, NMR, Fusion, Accelerator, Motor, SMES, and High Field Laboratory Magnet.

Presentation topic: “Challenges in REBCO Magnet Technology Toward Industrial Level of Technology Readiness”

Mohammad Yazdani-Asrami | University of Glasgow 

Mohammad Yazdani-Asrami is currently a “lecturer in electrically powered aircraft and operations” in University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. He holds a PhD in electrical power engineering and spent the last 12 years on research and development projects related to electrical engineering including conventional and superconducting components research in Italy, New Zealand, and the UK.  Dr. Yazdani-Asrami’s current fields of interest are cryo-electrification for modern transportation, real-time modelling, digitalisation, and artificial intelligence for electric aviation and superconductivity, and for large-scale applied superconductivity in power applications, including superconducting rotating machines, cables, fault current limiters, and transformers. In 2021, he was endorsed by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering as Global Talent. In 2023, he was selected as Young Professional of the Year by Cryogenic Society of America. He is a senior member of IEEE (SMIEEE), IET (MIET), the British Cryogenic Council (MBCC), and the Cryogenic Society of America (MCSA). Dr. Yazdani-Asrami is an editor at Superconductor Science and Technology (IOP Publishing), Superconductivity (Elsevier), Cryo (MDPI), Advanced Superconductivity (APACSCI), Aerospace Systems (Springer), International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences (Springer), World Journal of Engineering (Emerald Publishing), and Transformers Magazine (TM). He also served as guest editor for several special issues in “IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity”.

Presentation topic: “Artificial Intelligence for Superconducting Magnets: Towards Smarter Magnet Technology”

Samuele Mariotto | Università degli Studi di Milano

Samuele Mariotto is a research fellow at the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) and is also associated with the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratorio di Acceleratori e Superconduttività Applicata, LASA in Milan, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Physics, Astrophysics and Applied Physics from the Università degli Studi di Milano in 2021 with a thesis on quench localization in superconducting high order corrector magnets for the High Luminosity LHC upgrade project using magnetic field harmonics measurements. His current research focuses on energy saving MgB2 and HTS superconducting magnet solutions for heavy-ions and proton beamlines to reduce the energy consumption of large accelerator facilities. From 2022 he is the task leader of the working group studying the high field-large aperture main superconducting magnets for the International Muon Collider collaboration aiming to develop a 10 TeV muon collider machine and he is also deputy leader for the construction of a superconducting magnet laboratory at LASA, Milan within the Italian program Innovative Research Infrastructure on Applied Superconductivity (IRIS).

Presentation topic: “The Role of High Temperature Superconductors for a 10 TeV Muon Collider”

Marika D’Addazio | Politecnico di Torino

Marika D’Addazio is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Politecnico di Torino. Her research is conducted in collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and focuses on the design and optimization of various 20 T hybrid magnet configurations for future particle colliders. She earned her MSc in Energy and Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in March 2023. For her Master’s thesis, she worked at the CNAO Foundation (Pavia, Italy). Following her graduation, she spent three months as a Visiting Research Scholar at LBNL, where she learned the fundamentals of superconducting magnet design and participated in a test campaign investigating cracks in Nb₃Sn material under progressively higher compressive stresses.

Presentation topic: “Towards 20 T Hybrid Magnets: Perspectives and Challenges”

Rui Kang | IHEP-CAS

Rui Kang obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2020, with part of the work conducted at EPFL-SPC in Switzerland. He mainly studied the quench characteristics of high current HTS conductors and initiated the design of a quench experiment, providing important references for their optimization concerning quench characteristics. Since 2020, he has been working at the IHEP-CAS, where his research has focused on HTS magnet technologies for accelerators. This includes the quench detection and protection of HTS magnets, the application of no-insulation coil technique in accelerator magnets, and HTS canted-cosine-theta magnet technology.

Presentation topic: “Quench Dynamics of REBCO High Temperature Superconductors”

Barbara Santos | Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ)

Born in the city of Valença, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Barbara received the Electrical Engineer (2017) degree and the M.Sc. (2019) and D.Sc. (2022) in Electrical Engineering degrees from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. She is currently Adjunct Professor (equivalent to Assistant Professor in US terms) in the Electrical Engineering Department at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research interests include applied superconductivity and computational engineering, especially numerical modelling and simulation of electromagnetic power devices.

Presentation topic: “Magnetic Levitation Systems with HTS 2G Tapes: The Newest Developments and Future Perspectives” 

Joshua Feldman | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Josh Feldman is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is advised by Professors Kiruba Haran and Nenad Miljkovic. He researches cryogenic cooling and electro-thermal design of electric aircraft propulsion motors. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in electrical engineering, both from Illinois.

Presentation topic: “Cryogenic Motors for Aircraft Propulsion” 

Rebecca Riccioli | PSI

Rebecca Riccioli is a magnet engineer working at PSI since 2022 as magnet designer and magnetic measurement engineer. She designed radiation-hard magnets for the accelerator complex HIPA in the framework of the IMPACT project and she contributed to the magnetic measurements for the qualification of the SLS2 magnets. In 2021 she received her Ph.D. degree at the University of Aix-Marseille working at CEA Cadarache on mechanical modelling of ITER fusion conductors under-going hundreds of electro-thermal loadings. She was awarded with the national French prize “Prix Paul Caseau” in 2022 for the numerical modelling and simulation performed for her Ph.D. project. In June 2024 she was elected as a member of the advisory board of the international HTS modelling workgroup. Her research is now focused on solutions for cryocooled fast-ramping HTS magnets and compact geometries for hadron-therapy and AC magnets.

Presentation topic: “High Temperature Superconducting Technology for Fast Ramping Hadron Therapy Magnets: An Efficient and Sustainable Solution for Future Tumor Treatment?” 

Zhidong Shen | Tsinghua University

Zhidong Shen is a dedicated PhD candidate at Tsinghua University, specializing in Electrical Engineering with a focus on applied superconductivity. His research focuses on critical technologies for low-temperature superconducting (LTS) wind turbines, specifically the electromagnetic, thermal, and stress analysis of a 20 MW offshore LTS wind turbine. Guided by Professor Xiaohua Jiang, Shen’s doctoral work explores innovative methods to enhance generator power density using advanced rotor excitation winding designs with LTS NbTi coils. His current interests lie in developing cryogenic cooling systems for superconducting generators, integrating heat pipes and modular cryostat technologies for efficient liquid helium use and reliable operation. Shen’s contributions aim to advance renewable energy technology and sustainable power generation within the field of superconductivity.

Presentation topic: “Design and Analysis of a Modular Pipe Cryogenic Cooling System for a 20 MW LTS Wind Generator”