Simulation

• Gyrokinetic and MHD codes and where their expense becomes prohibitive
• Surrogate modelling to replace inner loops of expensive simulation
• Validation against experiment rather than against other simulations

Control

• Shape and position control as a control problem with hard safety limits
• Reinforcement learning trained in simulation and the sim-to-real gap
• Disruption prediction and mitigation within actuator response times

Design

• Stellarator coil optimisation and high-dimensional design spaces
• Multi-objective trade-offs across confinement, engineering and cost
• Uncertainty propagation from physics models into design decisions

Commercialisation

• Tritium breeding, materials survivability and the neutron problem
• Reading a fusion company's technical claims critically
• Where machine learning genuinely shortens the path and where it does not