First meeting of the Governing Council of NuPNET, the ERA-Net in Nuclear Physics
The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) and the Spanish Foundation for Research and Technology (FECYT), in collaboration with France’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS/IN2P3), organise the first Governing Council of the ERA-Net NuPNET on the 13th of October at MICINN’s headquarters.
Montserrat Torné, General Director for International Cooperation from MICINN, will welcome representatives from eighteen ministerial agencies and research centres, which are the founding members of NuPNET and based in fourteen European countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
CNRS/IN2P3 is the co-ordinator of the NuPNET project. Decisions are taken by the Governing Council, who meets for the first time on October 13th at MICINN, and are then implemented by the NuPNET Co-ordination Committee under the chairmanship of Prof. Sydney Galès (France), deputy director at CNRS/IN2P3 and director of the French GANIL facility, who is also the scientific co-ordinator of NuPNET. Dorothée Peitzmann (France), co-ordination manager of NuPNET and leader of WP1 "Overall Management"; Irene Reinhard (Germany), responsible of the projects in Nuclear and Hadronic Physics at GSI, is the leader of WP2 "Information exchange"; Angela Bracco (Italy), president of the scientific committee at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, INFN, is also the leader of WP3 "Definition of joint activities"; José Benlliure (Spain), professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, member of the Spanish National Programme of Particle Physics, co-ordinator of the Spanish participation in the FAIR project, is also the leader of WP4 "Launch of joint activities".
With a budget of €1.3M financed by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) over a period of 3 years, the ERA-Net NuPNET aims to increase co-ordination between funding agencies and to establish a transnational funding plan of infrastructures and programmes in Nuclear Physics.
From the 34 major facilities for technology and research in Europe, established by the European Strategic Forum on Research Facilities (ESFRI) from the European Union, two of them are nuclear physics facilities: SPIRAL2 (Système de Production d’Ions RAdioactifs en Ligne), which is being constructed at the GANIL facility in France, and FAIR (International Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) in Germany. Spain takes part in FAIR as co-founder with a contribution of 2% and fifteen research groups. Moreover, Spanish high technology companies, co-ordinated by the CIEMAT, will design and build some of the components for the FAIR accelerators.
The aim of research in Nuclear Physics is to examine matter at a subatomic level. Those fundamental particles, which compose our universe –i.e. electrons, quarks and leptons– unite to form more complex structures of matter – such as protons and neutrons, which build the nuclei of atoms. This research is fundamental to understand the processes of generation of matter and energy in the stars, which are reigned by the reactions between atomic nuclei, and is key to understanding the Universe from the first microseconds of its existence. The large atomic infrastructures used in Nuclear Physics help to answer questions such as: What is the origin of mass in matter? How are the chemical elements that exist on Earth created? And why are some of them more abundant than others? The field also has applications that benefit society in diverse areas, from medicine and security to power production.
PLACE:
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN)
Room Number 2, 3rd floor EAST
Calle Albacete 5
SP- 28027 Madrid
TIME:
13 October 2008 at 9am
For information on the NuPNET project, please contact:
- Sydney Galès, CNRS/IN2P3 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules, France), Scientific Co-ordinator of NuPNET
Email: gales@in2p3.fr
- Dorothée Peitzmann, CNRS/IN2P3, Co-ordination Manager of NuPNET, Leader of Work Package WP1 "Management"
Email: dpeitzmann@in2p3.fr
For information on the Spanish partners in NuPNET, please contact:
- José Benlliure Anaya, MICINN (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain), Leader of Work Package WP4 "Launch of joint activities"
Email: j.benlliure@usc.es
- José Manuel Baez Cristobal, FECYT (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología, Spain), Director for Infrastructures at the I+D+I
Email: txema.baez@fecyt.es
- Esther Rodriguez Blanco, FECYT (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología, Spain)
Email: esrodriguez@fecyt.es
Keywords
Nuclear Physics, NuPNET