International Development of gAnil-spirAL2

Project Information

IDEAAL

Grant agreement ID: 730989

DOI

10.3030/730989

Project closed

EC signature date 13 December 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 31 March 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Research Infrastructures

Total cost

€ 3 883 390,00

EU contribution

€ 3 883 390,00

Coordinated by

GRAND ACCELERATEUR NATIONAL D'IONS LOURDS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - IDEAAL (International Development of gAnil-spirAL2)

Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2021-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The objective of the IDEAAL Project was to explore all possibilities to develop GANIL (Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds) infrastructure, with its new SPIRAL2 facility, in order to ensure its long-term sustainability. GANIL is one of the premiere European heavy-ion beam research institutes and contributes to the radiance of European Science. The SPIRAL2 ESFRI roadmap facility, currently under commissioning in its first phase, will extend the GANIL opportunities to heavier radioactive beams, and/or with much higher intensities of both stable and radioactive ions. Since 2016, the GANIL legal status allows associated scientific partnerships with national and international collaborating institutions. The first objective of the IDEAAL Project was to expand the GANIL membership to academic national and international institutions, industries and private sponsors. This development goes hand-in-hand with a reinforcement of the involvement of the current institutional funding partners and academic users of GANIL facilities in the decision-making processes of the infrastructure. The second objective of IDEAAL was to further improve access to the infrastructure on several aspects including support to the users, access policy, assessment on cost of access to facilities and to data, improvement of performance capabilities as well as exchange and training of personnel with associated partners. The third objective of IDEAAL was an improving innovation potential and industrial applications of the facility. These three above mentioned objectives were supported by a strong communication policy towards members and funders, users and the layman.
All above mentioned objectives were reached in terms of the project deliverables in a due time.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

One of the main achievements of the IDEAAL project is the preparation and approval by the board of directors of GANIL in 2019 of “General provisions for the status of Scientific Partner at GANIL-SPIRAL2”. This document gives the definition of the scientific partnership, the ways to conclude partnerships, the status of scientific partner, and the rights and duties of the partners. On the basis of this document, partnerships have been negotiated with collaborators. The contacts were made with collaborators from Poland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Romania, Spain and Germany. The status of discussions/negotiations with different partners is the following:
- the COPIN consortium representing Poland signed with GANIL-SPIRAL2 a Memorandum of Understanding in April 2020, in with intention to become a scientific partner;
- Czech Republic and GANIL-SPIRAL2 have reached an agreement on a partnership, which would grant to NPI the status of Scientific partner at GANIL-SPIRAL2. The agreement was signed by GANIL and NPI but unfortunately withdrawn few weeks later due to the decision of French funding agencies DRF/CEA and IN2P3/CNRS in the end of 2020 to abandon the strategy and the methodology elaborated in the framework of IDEAAL.
The IDEAAL project provided GANIL with all the elements needed to start a fundraising campaign, in particular, the leaflet with arguments to highlight GANIL, its offer and vision, message to donors, and motivation towards the patronage. GANIL received a permission for collecting donations and allowing its future sponsors to benefit from tax deduction. An elaborated by IDEAAL methodology for the in-kind contributions was applied successfully in practice for contributions to the SPIRAL2 facility of NPI (Czech Republic). A new organization of the GANIL-SPIRAL2 users was established and a corresponding user database was created. The GANIL-SPIRAL2 users formed GANIL Users Group which elected/appointed the GANIL User Executive Committee (GUEC). The new data base of the GANIL users contains more than 900 persons.
The IDEAAL team prepared a code of conduct for users. The update of GANIL access policy and a customer request procedure have been elaborated, as well as the clear proposal for creation of a new user office. The analysis of the costs for serving the users was completed. The corresponding powerful tool is available for internal users covering all configurations of the experiments performed at GANIL/SPIRAL2. The editorial work on the data policy and data management plan (DMP) was accomplished on time. The DMP is fully applicable at GANIL since the beginning of 2021. The project allowed to realise an inventory of technical and administrative practices at GANIL, a basis for the ongoing modification of GANIL internal organisation.
The IDEAAL team prepared transnational access for industrial users. The international selection panel on transnational access was settled and several calls for experimental proposals were launched. The beam time was provided to one of the selected experiments. In parallel, the mapping of existing potential industrial applications at GANIL was done and new contacts were created with industries. The contract for the transfer of know-how for the beam profile monitors was signed in 2020. A very important potential for development of innovations, applications and transfer of technology at GANIL/SPIRAL2 was clearly demonstrated.
The project, allowed for a harmonization of GANIL graphic identity, strengthening the communication towards members and funding partners through the laboratory highlights, a new GANIL electronic newsletters and a new laboratory poster. For the benefit of GANIL users, a new GANIL website, a renewal of the internal broadcast system, a new GANIL user community portal, an organization of EURORIB’18 conference of Colloque GANIL 2017 and 2019, of the two international symposia and recently of the most important international conference on accelerators IPAC’20 were achieved. Posters and flyers for scientific and industrial users were created. For the layman, the GANIL brochure was updated. IDEAAL supported active participation of the GANIL personnel in French science festival and general public lectures.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The achievements of IDEAAL project allow for a well-organized, highly efficient and more sustainable development of the current GANIL/SPIRAL2 structure, transformed existing collaborations into strong partnerships and created new cooperation opportunities. The partnership agreements were fully prepared and are ready for signature. With SPIRAL2 accelerator, the leadership of the European Research Area in the global research environment will be strengthened through the uniqueness of the beams, the state-of-the-art scientific equipment and high-quality staff. Thus, GANIL will offer new opportunities to address societal challenges related in particular to energy and medicine especially through its new very intense light-ion and neutron beams. With its scientific and technological expertise fully identified thanks to the IDEAAL project, GANIL acts as a relay enhancing the transfer of its employee skills to industrial companies and their applications. GANIL with SPIRAL2 will attract additional researchers from all over the world, for the uniqueness of its facilities and for the very active collaborations with academia and industrial companies developed during the IDEAAL project. The users of GANIL have easier and better organized access to the facility and are be able to contribute through the User Group to its further optimization and development.

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