LENS Initiative Newsletter - June 2021, Issue 1

The founding of the European Neutron Scattering Association in 1994 and the International Society for Muon Spectroscopy in 2002 were also important steps to building a broad community of facilities and users.

For 30 years, EU-funded projects have provided us with a very convenient framework, timescale and funding for technical collaborations. However, this is not part of the new Horizon Europe programme. One of the challenges for LENS, and where I plan to focus my efforts as chair, is to renew these collaborations, or initiate new ones, though now they will have to be self-funded and self-organised. LENS Working Groups 3 and 4 need to include real joint projects with deliverables and milestones (all the things we hated when the EU made us do them …), as well as more general meetings and information exchange. While there are opportunities in Horizon Europe, these will be mainly around the delivery of scientific services to priority challenge areas such as the Green Deal, in partnership with other research infrastructures (e.g. through ARIE – Analytical Research Infrastructures of Europe). They will only be a very small proportion of the overall science programmes that our facilities already offer in these areas, so they should consume a proportionate share of LENS effort.

The other challenge for LENS will be to help maintain the cohesion of the community of facilities and users that I referred to before. While the user community is a lively mix of new faces and old timers, the facilities are mainly old timers, several of whom we have unfortunately lost recently. The expected new arrival – the ESS – is a bit overdue and any low energy accelerator based facilities are yet to be conceived (even if names have already been chosen). Like any community, we will have our differences in priorities, but there is a strong common recognition that ‘united we stand’ – which is why LENS exists.