Photon Science 2017
Higlights and Annual Report
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Beschreibung
2017 will become known as a historical year for Photon
Science in Hamburg. The European XFEL, the world´s most
modern and most powerful X-ray laser facility has started
user operation in September. The official inauguration of this
international facility on 1 September created a worldwide
echo in the scientific communities and in the media. DESY
devised this facility, developed the superconducting
accelerator technology and constructed the 2 km long linear
accelerator beyond the original specification and has
underlined with this great success its leading position as a
top accelerator laboratory. It is now upon our accelerator
crew to assure stable operation of the superconducting linear
accelerator and upon our X-ray experts to exploit the unique
potential of the facility for basic research. I am most curious
to see the first breakthrough results emerging from the
experiments in the coming years.
A further highlight of the year has been the official inauguration
of the Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) on 29 June
in the presence of Ministers, State Secretaries and the First
and Second Mayor of Hamburg. It has become a wonderful
science building offering a perfect interdisciplinary
environment for our researchers. It has been most gratifying
to see that the DFG proposal for the Cryo-EM laboratory has
been fully approved, allowing now the implementation of a
state-of-the-art Cryo-EM technology within CSSB. Most
sadly, the excitement of the successful start of CSSB
operations has been embittered by the tragic death of a
worker. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.
Also our FLASH and PETRA III extension halls are now almost
fully operational, offering additional and novel experimental
capabilities to our users. We are currently analysing options
of enhancing our bilateral co-operations with our Swedish,
Indian and Russian partners.
The comprehensive DESY strategy process is in its final
stage. Many brilliant ideas have been developed by our internalcompetence teams which will enter into the DESY Strategy
2020-2035. It is most important that we have been able to
identify not only future priorities but as well posteriorities.
This will render the laboratory very robust to cope with the
future challenges. Moreover the strategy process clearly
positioned the PETRA III upgrade project (‘PETRA IV’) as the
next large research infrastructure project and devised an
ambitious future FEL plan.
PETRA IV has to be integrated in the national roadmap during
the next update which will tentatively happen in 2019. This
process will become embedded into the European initiative
called LEAPS (League of European Accelerator-based
Photon Sources) which has been initiated by DESY in 2015.
LEAPS is aiming for a coordinated upgrade of the European
X-ray/laser facilities and for a better integration of neighbouring
communities. The launch event took place in Brussels on
13 November.
I am very pleased that the construction of the new Center for
X-ray and Nano Science (CXNS) will start in 2018. It will focus
our photon science research activities and also become the
home of our Schleswig-Holstein partner institutes, the
Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht and the Christian Albrechts
University Kiel.
The DESY campus is developing very dynamically. DESY is
making a strategic handshake with the University of
Hamburg which is planning to allocate the physics and
chemistry departments on the Bahrenfeld campus, in a later
stage possibly also parts of the biology department. This
will foster novel co-operations and new opportunities for the
training of students and young scientists. DESY is preparing
inter alia a new interdisciplinary Center for Water Science
(CWS) together with the university and further partners.
Thanks to a special financial support by the German
Parliament, we are able to provide a substantial face lift to
the laboratory including an upgrade of our guiding system
(‘Wegeleitsystem’), the construction of a visitor centre and
the modernisation of our buildings.
DESY’s photon science infrastructure offers a unique interdisciplinary
research opportunity for scientists all over the
world, but has also a great potential for industrial applications.
This needs to be explored in all aspects in the coming years.
The development of an ‘Industrial Case’ for PETRA IV is thus
an important element of this strategy as well as the construction
of the new Innovation Centre starting end of this year. We are
currently investigating the options to launch a new Helmholtz
Institute at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg in
collaboration with DESY, which will a have a focus on novel
medical imaging tools for future applications.
I want to thank all members of the Photon Science division for
their excellent work in the last years and look forward to the
coming years which will be more brilliant than ever.
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Themen in »Photon Science 2017«
Annual Report Higlights Photon Science