Zhibin Guo, presently associate professor at Peking University, is the winner of the 2019 "René Pellat Festival Memorial Prize". The prize was awarded by Dr. Alain Bécoulet, head of the IRFM Institute (CEA), in the presence of Zoe Pellat, granddaughter of the scientist René Pellat. Haihong Che was the first winner of the prize in 2017.
This prize rewards his theoretical work on the evolution of heat flux phases in QH mode – the Quiescent H-mode is an improved confinement regime observed in tokamak plasmas, characterized among others by the absence of strong relaxation events such as Edge Localized Modes, notoriously deleterious in ITER – as well as for his contribution to the phenomenology of the access to QH mode on DIII-D, in particular regarding the prediction of the critical ExB shear for the transition.
Zhibin Guo has also contributed to the theory of phase dynamics of zonal flows, to the understanding of L-H transition and to the development of turbulent reconnection models. He is already the author or co-author of more than fifteen scientific publications. He has participated to several festivals, and was also involved in the definition of the 2019 Festival's topic.
The award ceremony took place during the gala dinner at Aquabella, in Aix-en-Provence. The various organizers and sponsors, such as Vitrociset, Omexom, Fusenet, Atos, Air Liquide, FR FCM, CPT, SFP, the city of Aix, AMIDEX and AMU were greatly acknowledged for their critical support of the Festival de Théorie. The Festival ends on July 26th.
Jury for the Prize:
Pr. P.H. Diamond (UCSD, chair)
Dr. X. Garbet (CEA, co-chair)
Pr. D. Hughes (U. Leeds)
Pr. L. Wang (U. Huazhong)
Pr. H. Che (U. Alabama Huntsville)
Dr. G. Dif-Pradalier (CEA, scientific secretary)