Looking back on 2025

As the year draws to a close, the V4F consortium is looking back on an extremely busy year. Here are some of our highlights:

• The year kicked off with a bang: Laser Focus World included V4F in their January article "The quest for laser fusion fuels intensifies", highlighting the importance of our work on novel borane targets for nuclear fusion

• Our third peer-reviewed publication was published: "Interaction of Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulses with borane targets of different hydrogen-boron ratio"

• The consortium attended various conferences, giving presentations at events such as Photonics West 2025, CLEO Europe 2025, and the 5th International Workshop on Proton-Boron Fusion.

• Our coordinator Regina Gumenyuk (TAU) was invited to present the V4F project at the internationally renowned laser company Coherent.

• Our female PIs Regina Gumenyuk (TAU) and Katrin Wondraczek (IPHT) attended the "Women in Photonics" workshop 2025 to support young female researchers in their photonics careers.

• Michael Londesborough and his team from IIC attended the Czech science fair "Veletrh Vedy" with a range of activities for all age groups to engage the wider public in conversations around the topics of our project.

As 2026 begins, V4F will enter the final year of the project. While there are certainly challenges ahead, the team is excited and motivated to dive in and bring all the hard work together in our ultimate proof-of-principle experiments.