As stated in the NRC report from the Burning Plasma Assessment Committee in the quote above, one of the major issues facing the fusion program is the aging of the community.

Clearly the fusion program must train a new generation of young researchers in order to maintain the current rate of progress. Similarly, the Center's ambitious scientific program requires an exceptional team of young researchers with a deep understanding of fusion physics. To meet our need (and part of the community's need), CMPD sponsors advanced education program in fusion science and plasma physics. The aim of this program is to bridge the gap between the standard graduate courses in plasma physics and the frontiers of research. The education program has three elements.

• Advanced Courses Throughout the year, advanced courses are taught at Maryland and UCLA. The courses will be available via video conferencing to both center sites and to the fusion community. Although the curriculum may vary, we envisage several core courses to build on existing courses at the center sites.
  • Advanced Plasma Confinement Theory Theory of equilibrium, stability, heating and transport in magnetically confined devices. Team taught. Lecturers may include: Drake, Dorland, Leboeuf, Morales, Hassam, Peebles, Cowley, etc.
  • Advanced Kinetic Theory Drift-Kinetics, gyrokinetics, closures, wave-particle interaction, quasi-linear theory. Team taught. Lecturers may include: Antonsen, Dorland, Hammett, Morales, Drake, etc.
  • Plasma Simulation PIC methods, continuum models, parallel methods, Fluid and MHD methods. Team taught. Lecturers may include: Decyck, Dorland, Leboeuf, Antonsen, Glasser, Mori.
  • Experimental Methods Modern diagnostics from probes to scattering. Team taught. Lecturers may include: Gekelman, Carter, Peebles, etc.
  We invite lecturers from outside our institutions to participate in this program. Many of the modern developments in plasma and fusion science are missing from current textbooks. The CMPD will support publication of high quality lecture notes and textbooks to help address this issue.

• Winter School The center runs an intensive three- to four-week winter school. The first school (January, 2005) will be hosted by the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, together with a one-week workshop on multiscale fusion physics. Lecturers will be drawn from the community. Again, this school is aimed at the advanced graduate student and post-doc level. The curriculum will be focused on physics issues and current research. Extensive notes and resources will be provided for the participants and we expect that this will stimulate the writing of advanced texts by lecturers. Each day will end with problem solving sessions run by the students. One of the purposes of the school is to build connections and a sense of community among the younger generation of fusion researchers and plasma scientists. This provides a benefit to the whole community that is less quantifiable than the direct scientific benefits but nonetheless real. We will the school in the winter because summers are already dominated by conferences. The school will accept up to forty participants from throughout the fusion community and the center will provide travel grants and accommodation based on the need and suitability of the participant.
• Weekly Seminars Beginning in the Fall of 2004, CMPD will run a weekly seminar shared between sites over the web. This will be the central unifying event of the week for the two sites and it will involve various presentations such as speakers from outside the center, reports on the progress of Center projects by a post-doc or graduate student, and a discussion. Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows of the Center that have inter-institutional research projects will be funded to visit appropriately for extended periods.