Guest Editorial Special Issue: Selected Papers From the 29th IEEE Symposium on Fusion Engineering

Since 2020, all scientific communities have faced the challenge of holding their regular conferences during a global pandemic. The isolation brought about by widespread remote work made it especially important to maintain our professional connections by holding the 2021 edition of our biennial Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE) on schedule, in spite of the challenges. After vaccines became available in early 2021 and a six-month postponement to December 2021 was negotiated, it looked as though our hope for an in-person SOFE-2021 would become a reality. Unfortunately, as conference plans were being finalized, those hopes evaporated with the arrival of the new virus variants and reimposition of travel restrictions. Fortunately, fusion engineers are experienced in having to improvise in the face of last-minute schedule setbacks, so with the tremendous support of our partners in IEEE, we were able to change direction with only two months to go and hold a very successful SOFE-2021 as a virtual conference.