Our employee, Dr. Karel Řezáč, will travel to the University of Michigan thanks to the prestigious Fulbright-Masaryk Scholarship. At this American university, he will conduct research on electrical discharges that generate hot dense plasma from September 2024 to May 2025.

The main goal of Karel Řezáč’s project is to explore the transferability and scalability of previous successful experiments with pre-ionization of gaseous loads, which were achieved on the large GIT-12 device in Tomsk during prior long-term collaboration. The follow-up research will be conducted on the medium-sized MAIZE facility (with a peak electric current of up to 1 MA and a rise time of 100 ns) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“I am very much looking forward to this longer-term trip, especially to collaborating with Prof. Ryan McBride and his entire research group, which is a globally significant training center for doctoral students in our scientific field. The University of Michigan has a very well-equipped laboratory, with the aforementioned MAIZE device and many other instruments for plasma diagnostics. Of course, I will also strive to contribute to improving experiments and teaching students, particularly with my knowledge in diagnosing fast fusion neutrons and ions. At the same time, I will observe how they work with doctoral students in the USA. I hope to transfer these and other experimental experiences back to our Department of Physics at the Czech Technical University,” says Karel Řezáč.

Karel Řezáč is a member of the High Voltage Discharges Group at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University, which focuses on fundamental research of hot and dense plasma, particularly the study of high voltage discharges similar to lightning.

Dr. Řezáč specializes in plasma diagnostics, numerical simulations, and the design of diagnostic instruments for measuring fusion plasma. He is involved in teaching Physics 1, Physics 2 courses, and he leads the lecture on Plasma diagnostics. He graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, and received the Rector’s Award for outstanding doctoral thesis, focusing on the reconstruction of energy spectra of neutrons produced in Z-pinch fusion experiments.