Banishing Babel

Stefano Chiocchio is Head of the Technical Integration Division within the Project Office. Heading a team of 20 people, his task is to establish procedures to make sure the ITER design is conducted in an orderly way, controlled and verified at all stages, to manage the many interfaces and establish and control the project configuration as changes occur.

In other words, he sees his role as ensuring that ITER does not turn into the Tower of Babel in Breughel's famous picture, where one side is more or less complete and the rest is in chaos. "Communication is most important," he stresses. "There has to be a culture of integration instilled in the whole project," and by this he means both the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies. One example of the many activities undertaken by his team is work on design integration itself, concerning changes in configuration and design layout. Close collaboration with the design office is obviously essential.

A major objective for his Division is to streamline communications by making sure that access to the latest information/documentation can be given in a controlled and efficient fashion.

A nuclear engineer by training, Stefano worked on experimental fission reactors at ENEA in his native Italy before working in the nuclear industry. He moved to fusion research in 1988, working on ITER in all its different phases at Garching in Germany, before arriving at Cadarache in summer 2006. He lives near Luynes with his wife and two sons.