Pavlos Tsavalas is a PhD student working under the framework of the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy (EUROfusion), at the Fusion Technology Group (FTG) of the Institute of Nuclear and Radiological Sciences and Technology, Energy and Safety of NCSR “Demokritos”, since 2016.

In the frame of his PhD thesis entitled “Investigation of plasma facing materials at JET tokamak”, plasma facing materials from JET tokamak main chamber after the interaction with the plasma are investigated in order to assess material erosion, fuel retention and material deposition from other areas of the tokamak. The methods that he uses are ion beam analysis (IBA) including Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA) and Rutherford Backscattering (RBS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). A major part of his PhD thesis refers to the measurement of the differential cross sections of the deuteron reactions on beryllium for the assessment of the deuteron NRA measurements on beryllium. The ion beam analysis measurements are carried out at the TANDEM accelerator of NCSR “Demokritos” and at Ruder Boskovic Institute, in Croatia.

In 2013, he received his BSc in Physics and in 2016 his MSc in Nuclear and Elemental Particle Physics from the Department of Physics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UOA). The PhD thesis will be defended at the School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the National Technical University of Athens.