Project summary

The Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3) "European LIght Sources Activities" (ELISA) has two strategic objectives:

to support transnational users of national facilities in the domain of synchrotron and FEL science;
to support joint research activities (JRAs) with the purpose of:
1. enhancing the effectiveness of the facilities in serving users and in particular transnational users.
2. contributing to the development of novel sources in this domain.

The access and research initiatives are complemented and enhanced by targeted networking activities:

The ELISA project will continue the support for specilized meetings and workshops with the objectives to stimulate new ideas for transnational collaboration.
Moreover, the high-level Hercules Specialized Course for PhD students and young researchers will be supported to prepare new generations of users.

List of participants
ELETTRA	ALBA	AU	HZB	CNRS	DESY
DIAMOND	EMBL	ESRF	FOM	FZD	KIT
INFN	MAXLAB	PSI	SOLEIL	STFC

The initiative is based on the very solid record of success of the previous I3 (IA-SFS) project, the EC support has practically opened the most advanced network of synchrotron and FEL sources in the world to all qualified European users based on merit.
The present I3 will continue and boost this very successful approach. The impact is positive on scientists from all over Europe and in particular on those from countries without this type of facilities. Many new experiments will be made possible fully exploiting the intellectual resources of thousands of scientists. The JRAs target strategic areas of instrumentation with specific emphasis on computational efforts for data analysis, new sensors for X-rays detectors and diagnostic tools for future x-ray lasers.

A few quantitative facts can explain the magnitude of the challenges met by the present project. There are now 22 facilities operating or under development in Europe (besides Russia): 13 synchrotrons (ESRF, SOLEIL, SLS, MAX-lab, DAFNE, ANKA, Diamond, DORIS, PETRA, BESSY, ISA, ALBA, Elettra) and 8 FELs (FLASH, FELBE, FELIX, CLIO, FERMI, SPARX, BESSY-FEL, MAX-IV). This capital constitutes almost 30% of the world resources in this domain; the estimated accumulated investments for construction, commissioning and operation exceed 7 billion Euros.

The duration of the project is 30 months: March 1st, 2009 - August 31st, 2011.

The I3 Project ELISA is supported by the European Community - Research Infrastructure Action under the FP7 Programme (EC contribution: 10 million Euro, grant n° 226716).