Last week, our shielding consultant, John Billingsley, had the opportunity to attend the Open Source Software for Fusion Energy (OSSFE) Conference – a first-of-its-kind event dedicated to advancing the development of open-source tools within the fusion energy community. The conference brought together researchers, developers, and enthusiasts from around the world to share exciting open source developments designed to accelerate progress in one of the most complex scientific challenges of all time.

Throughout the day, there was a wide range of engaging sessions and discussions, including technical talks, poster presentations, software demos, Q&A panel sessions, and informal meetups. Researchers presented on a broad range of topics including plasma physics, neutronics, tritium transport, and materials science, and showcased new tools in practical software tutorials.

The event was hosted through Gather in fully customized virtual platform which had been designed to replicate a real-world conference space. This wasn’t something we’d used before and was an interesting new environment to explore. You could navigate the space just like a real conference – dropping into rooms where presentations where happening or using proximity chat to strike up conversations with other attendees as you “walked” past. It brought a surprisingly authentic feel to an online event.

A huge thank you to the organising committee - Rémi Delaporte-Mathurin, James Dark, Jonathan Shimwell, Nick Murphy, Patrick Shriwise, Samuele Meschini, Ethan Peterson, and Julien Hillairet – for putting together such a well-organised and engaging event. We are looking forward to attending again in 2026.

You can check out all of the talks from the conference: https://www.youtube.com/@OSSFE-conf

And explore the posters: https://zenodo.org/communities/ossfe/records?q=&l=list&p=1&s=10