Bastien Boussier

16 Jun 2008 - Sabina Griffith

Although he's only 25 and one of the youngest members of the project, French engineer Bastien Boussier already is a real globetrotter. When he joined ITER two months ago, Bastien came straight from the UK where he had been working as a Vacuum Instrumentation Engineer on the Diamond Light Source project, a third generation synchrotron, for the past three years. Before that, he worked in Canada where he was involved in building a superconducting Linac for exotic ions and on his professional journey also passed through many laboratories such as CERN and H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory where he contributed to experiments.

Bastien studied physics and instrumentation in France and then specialized in technologies for particle accelerators. So when he learned that ITER was looking for a Vacuum Instrumentation Engineer in the Vacuum Pumping Section, not only did that perfectly fit his experience and ambitions, but it also gave him the opportunity to come back to his home country France. "ITER is not really France though, because the environment is so international," says Bastien, "which, together with the complexity of the project itself, makes it such a inspiring place to work."