Are you a potential user of EU synchrotrons and FELs ?

The ELISA project offers you

access and financial assistance to perform experiments at leading Snchrotrons and FEL laboratories

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1. Geographical distance does NOT matter

One of the core elements of the Transnational Access service offered to the users by the ELISA project is the
Travel and Subsistence (T&S) fully free of charge .
By financially supporting transnational access, the intent is to eliminate the money element from the factor preventing scientists from using the best instruments for their experiments.

No matter how far is the researcher's institution country - be it Poland, Portugal, Malta or Estonia - from the research facility, the travel will be organized and paid by the facility, as well as the accomodation during the beamtime.

2. Proposal selection is based on merit

An eligible user is supported if his/her proposal has a high scientific merit.
Each facility, on the average, publishes a call for proposals twice a year on its website. Proposals are electronically submitted and evaluated by a series of international panels composed by experts in the specific research field treated.
Moreover, it has to be stressed that the peer review process of beamtime requests is essentially blind to the country of origin.

The main criterion applied for proposals evaluation is and will remain scientific merit.

3. To which facilities I can be granted access ?

Bringing together 17 european research facilities, the ELISA projects constitutes the largest synchrotron and FELs network in the world.
The 15 partners offering open transnational access manage 12 Synchrotron facilities and 5 Free Electron Sources: find here the complete list of possibilities.

3.1 How can I choose the best beamline for my experiment?

3.2 Eligibility rules

4. How to apply for Transnational Access -...work in progress...

Here we plan to describe in a simple way the procedure to be followed when applying for a EU supported beamtime within the ELISA project; it will not be straightforward to give a general picture, but we will first start and then ask for a costructive feedback from tue ELISA User delegates.

We also plan to insert here the information for users that did get support: Information for the Supported Users.

5. NEW! E.S.U.O : European Synchrotron User Organization

The 5 ELISA User delegates have set up a European Synchrotron User Organization, that had its first meeting on January 18^th^, 2010. This independent organization is composed by national delegates of 19 European Countries plus Israel, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland. Find here your national representative !

6. Transnational Access Success Stories

The Transnational Access Activities (TAA) are based on the very solid success record of the individual transnational access contracts at each facility in the past decade.

In the five years of the previous project (I3 IA-SFS, March 2004 - February 2009), the TAA promoted the "hands on" access to 14 European facilities by more than 9000 users. They were selected in base of merit and came from 32 different countries of the European Area and abroad.

The IA-SFS project has been selected as that has been selected as one of the 40 success stories of the sixth framework programme.

...work in progress... To come: interesting statistics on the users that benefit from that access program.

7. Frequently Asked Questions-...work in progress...

Examples:

1. I am a user of my national facility: can I also benefit from the transnational access program?
2. How many users from a single group can receive financial support for a single beamtime?
3. How can I choose the best beamline to perform my experiment ?
4. Suggest a FAQ to the project coordinator