Elina Militello Asp

From a young age, Dr. Militello Asp was drawn to problem-solving, understanding how things work and observing the world around her. During her teenage years, she had a particular interest in maths and physics which led her to gravitate towards a career in the natural sciences. In 1998, Dr. Militello Asp graduated from the University of Uppsala with an MSc in Engineering Physics. During her studies, she spent three months at CERN for her master’s thesis and six months as an Erasmus student in Dublin. Driven by the belief that fusion has the potential to meet the world’s energy demand in a carbon-neutral way, Dr. Militello Asp decided to pursue a PhD in Fusion Plasma Physics. “I wanted to do my part in making fusion energy a reality, so I decided I wanted to do a PhD,” she explains. Her studies led her to work for a time on JET, in Culham, where she met her first postdoctoral supervisor and secured a two-year position at CEA in France.

Dr. Militello Asp’s distinguished career -which has spanned over twenty-five years- initially focused on theoretical studies of drift waves in tokamak plasmas. Towards the end of her PhD however, her interests shifted towards integrated modelling of plasmas. In 2008, after a second postdoc at EPFL, in Switzerland, Dr. Militello Asp moved to the UK to work on experimental campaign management for JET. “After my second post-doc, I wanted a different challenge, and therefore I took up a position in the JET Close Support Unit in the Programme and Analysis Group,” she says. Among other things, her role involved managing and coordinating 350 EU scientists.

In 2012, Dr. Militello Asp joined UKAEA as a fusion plasma scientist, acquiring expertise in whole-plasma modelling. Despite the steep learning curve, Dr. Militello Asp rapidly progressed at UKAEA, becoming the project manager of a highly complex modelling project aimed at improving the understanding of how to optimise fusion energy production at ITER, while respecting engineering and operational limits.x

Currently, Dr. Militello Asp leads a team of ten scientists at UKAEA. Her area of expertise lies in whole-plasma integrated modelling using JINTRAC. JINTRAC is able to, among other things, simultaneously simulate deuterium-tritium mixing, helium production and transport, neon seeding for power load control, tungsten sputtering, and core accumulation of both neon and tungsten.

A main highlight in Dr. Militello Asp’s career was giving a presentation at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in 2021, where she was met with enthusiasm from other scientists regarding the capabilities of JINTRAC. She spoke about her team’s work on simulations for the 15MA/5.3T DT Q=10 scenario development for ITER’s pre-fusion plasma operation phase. “In general, when we present what we have achieved for ITER, showcasing the impressive capabilities of JINTRAC, other scientists often get very keen on knowing more and how they can apply JINTRAC on their tokamaks,” she shares. However, Dr. Militello Asp acknowledges that her career has not been without its challenges. In the early days, finding a permanent position was no easy task due to limited job opportunities. “Nowadays, with high investment in fusion, there are plenty of job opportunities. This was not the case when I started out, so finding a permanent position was a major challenge for me,” she recalls.