Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ISABEL (Improving the sustainability of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-05-01 do 2023-10-31
One of the great challenges of society is innovation through the development of new and advanced materials. Such tailored materials are needed in all key-technological areas, from renewable energy concepts, through next-generation data storage, quantum computing, to biocompatible materials for medical applications. In order to face this challenge, advanced analytical facilities are needed. High magnetic fields are among the most powerful tools available to scientists for the study, modification and control of states of matter. In the USA and China, very large investments in high magnetic field user facilities have been made during the last two decades, and in order to remain competitive, Europe also needs such a facility which provides the highest possible fields for its many active and world-leading researchers.
For historic reasons, Europe has three mid-scale high magnetic field facilities; the Laboratoire National de Champs Magnétiques Intenses, with sites for pulsed fields in Toulouse and continuous fields in Grenoble, the Hochfeld-Magnetlabor Dresden and the High-field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen. These facilities have progressively and successfully integrated their activities over the last two decades with the support of the European Commission, resulting in the creation of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL), a legal entity in the form of an AISBL under Belgian law. The principal goal of the ISABEL project is to ensure the long-term sustainability of this EMFL and define and implement a roadmap for its future development. This translates into three main objectives:
- strengthening the EMFL structure by enlarging its membership and by improving several organisational aspects,
- strengthening the socio-economic impact of the EMFL, by bridging the gap with industry, attracting more industrial users and transferring its technology to industry and
- strengthening of the role of high magnetic field research in Europe and worldwide.
For historic reasons, Europe has three mid-scale high magnetic field facilities; the Laboratoire National de Champs Magnétiques Intenses, with sites for pulsed fields in Toulouse and continuous fields in Grenoble, the Hochfeld-Magnetlabor Dresden and the High-field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen. These facilities have progressively and successfully integrated their activities over the last two decades with the support of the European Commission, resulting in the creation of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL), a legal entity in the form of an AISBL under Belgian law. The principal goal of the ISABEL project is to ensure the long-term sustainability of this EMFL and define and implement a roadmap for its future development. This translates into three main objectives:
- strengthening the EMFL structure by enlarging its membership and by improving several organisational aspects,
- strengthening the socio-economic impact of the EMFL, by bridging the gap with industry, attracting more industrial users and transferring its technology to industry and
- strengthening of the role of high magnetic field research in Europe and worldwide.
The project has been severely impacted by the COVID crisis; the EMFL facilities have all been shut down for several months, and could only operate on a reduced scale during most of the remainder of RP1 due to local and national travel and access restrictions. Despite these difficulties, good progress on many tasks has been made, most of the planned deliverables were realized and the foreseen milestones were achieved. However, the impact of COVID remaining, the duration of the project has been extended by 12 months, until October 2025.
The most notable advances of RP1 and RP2 are summarized below:
• New member of EMFL
The partner Universita del Salento is coordinating a consortium of 20 institutions to secure Italian membership of the EMFL and its request for membership has been approved by the EMFL Council on the 9th of June 2023. The agreement has been signed on the 17th of November 2023. Meetings of other candidate user communities (Spain, Switzerland, Czech Republic) have been held.
• New access modes
In the frame of the ISABEL project, we have designed and implemented novel access procedures to the EMFL facilities, aiming at addressing the needs of current and potential users of EMFL. Six novel access modes are now running: Fast-track access, Mail- in access, Dual access, First-time access, Technical-development access, Industrial access and a long-term access mode has been prepared and will be proposed soon.
• Outreach activities
- The quarterly newsletter EMFL News (https://emfl.eu/emfl_newsletter/ ) which is widely distributed amongst the high field user community, has published in each issue articles on the different aspects of ISABEL. In particular a series of articles on the seven regional facilities has been achieved as well as the presentation of our industrial partners.
- A dedicated ISABEL website continuously updates its progress and the Twitter and LinkedIn pages continue to announce the major results and important events.
- A proper exhibition booth and presentation material for ISABEL is now used for all the industrial exhibitions that the project’s team attends.
- In order to strengthen the dissemination towards a more general public, the EMFL facilities have developed virtual tours. Some are now accessible online (HFML - https://virtualtours.360totaal.nl/tour/hfml-felix ), others are being finalized (HZDR, LNCMI-Toulouse) or planned (LNCMI-Grenoble).
- In 2022, two EMFL events were organized with the support of ISABEL: the EMFL Days organized in Kerkrade (Netherlands) from September 19-21 with about 120 EMFL staff members. Also, an EMFL school was held between 21-25 September at Kerkrade too, with 48 young researchers (PhD students and postdocs).
• Connection with industry
- A seminar cycle (https://emfl.eu/isabel/documents/) with around 200 attendees was given by experts of Intellectual Property Rights, technology transfer, patent registration and entrepreneurship with the aim to raise staff awareness on economic and societal issues related to their high field research and development activities.
- To strengthen the connection between the socio-economic needs and the academic research, EMFL starts an Industrial Partners Club. EMFL proposes to all of its partners and every interested industrial enterprise to join and discuss about different topics. The EMFL Industrial Club has been launched on the 12th of December 2022, with 17 organizations represented.
- Our skillsmap on expertise and know-how of all EMFL facilities is now publicly available (https://emfl.eu/emflwebsite/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FinalSkillMAp-1.pdf ).
• Data management Plan
The EMFL Data policy was defined and the Data Management Plan has been updated in April 2023, defining adequate procedures for handling, storing, archiving and disseminating data with specific methods and software tools.
• Workshops for an elaboration of the scientific case for high-field experiments at advanced sources
In order to develop the scientific case for high-field experiments at the advanced sources, and to make an inventory of the needs of the users in magnet characteristics, instrumentation and organisation, WP6 team has started to organize workshops; three of the four workshops planned have taken place so far:
- Workshop “Perspectives of High Magnetic Fields at Neutron Sources” (Grenoble, France - November 2-4, 2022)
- Workshop on Magnetic Fields in Laboratory High Energy Density Plasmas (Paris-Palaiseau, France - December 19-21, 2022)
- Workshop Free electron lasers & high magnetic fields (HFML-FELIX, Netherlands, June 14-15 2023)
A fourth one, with THz sources, is planned for November 2023.
The most notable advances of RP1 and RP2 are summarized below:
• New member of EMFL
The partner Universita del Salento is coordinating a consortium of 20 institutions to secure Italian membership of the EMFL and its request for membership has been approved by the EMFL Council on the 9th of June 2023. The agreement has been signed on the 17th of November 2023. Meetings of other candidate user communities (Spain, Switzerland, Czech Republic) have been held.
• New access modes
In the frame of the ISABEL project, we have designed and implemented novel access procedures to the EMFL facilities, aiming at addressing the needs of current and potential users of EMFL. Six novel access modes are now running: Fast-track access, Mail- in access, Dual access, First-time access, Technical-development access, Industrial access and a long-term access mode has been prepared and will be proposed soon.
• Outreach activities
- The quarterly newsletter EMFL News (https://emfl.eu/emfl_newsletter/ ) which is widely distributed amongst the high field user community, has published in each issue articles on the different aspects of ISABEL. In particular a series of articles on the seven regional facilities has been achieved as well as the presentation of our industrial partners.
- A dedicated ISABEL website continuously updates its progress and the Twitter and LinkedIn pages continue to announce the major results and important events.
- A proper exhibition booth and presentation material for ISABEL is now used for all the industrial exhibitions that the project’s team attends.
- In order to strengthen the dissemination towards a more general public, the EMFL facilities have developed virtual tours. Some are now accessible online (HFML - https://virtualtours.360totaal.nl/tour/hfml-felix ), others are being finalized (HZDR, LNCMI-Toulouse) or planned (LNCMI-Grenoble).
- In 2022, two EMFL events were organized with the support of ISABEL: the EMFL Days organized in Kerkrade (Netherlands) from September 19-21 with about 120 EMFL staff members. Also, an EMFL school was held between 21-25 September at Kerkrade too, with 48 young researchers (PhD students and postdocs).
• Connection with industry
- A seminar cycle (https://emfl.eu/isabel/documents/) with around 200 attendees was given by experts of Intellectual Property Rights, technology transfer, patent registration and entrepreneurship with the aim to raise staff awareness on economic and societal issues related to their high field research and development activities.
- To strengthen the connection between the socio-economic needs and the academic research, EMFL starts an Industrial Partners Club. EMFL proposes to all of its partners and every interested industrial enterprise to join and discuss about different topics. The EMFL Industrial Club has been launched on the 12th of December 2022, with 17 organizations represented.
- Our skillsmap on expertise and know-how of all EMFL facilities is now publicly available (https://emfl.eu/emflwebsite/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FinalSkillMAp-1.pdf ).
• Data management Plan
The EMFL Data policy was defined and the Data Management Plan has been updated in April 2023, defining adequate procedures for handling, storing, archiving and disseminating data with specific methods and software tools.
• Workshops for an elaboration of the scientific case for high-field experiments at advanced sources
In order to develop the scientific case for high-field experiments at the advanced sources, and to make an inventory of the needs of the users in magnet characteristics, instrumentation and organisation, WP6 team has started to organize workshops; three of the four workshops planned have taken place so far:
- Workshop “Perspectives of High Magnetic Fields at Neutron Sources” (Grenoble, France - November 2-4, 2022)
- Workshop on Magnetic Fields in Laboratory High Energy Density Plasmas (Paris-Palaiseau, France - December 19-21, 2022)
- Workshop Free electron lasers & high magnetic fields (HFML-FELIX, Netherlands, June 14-15 2023)
A fourth one, with THz sources, is planned for November 2023.
Other results are ongoing to address the expected impacts planned by ISABEL:
• attract more industrial users to the EMFL facilities through a dedicated industrial liaisons officer, dedicated industrial access procedures, and metrology services adapted to industrial interests
• making industry aware of the frontier science being conducted at the EMFL sites by targeted outreach activities, participations to industrial exhibitions and continue to develop the EMFL Industrial Partner Club.
• development and strengthening of a global collaboration strategy based on a roadmap joint experiments high-fields/advances sources and a blue-print for international governance structure
• development of an EMFL magnet technology roadmap focusing on the improvement of energy management, materials and modelling tools.
• attract more industrial users to the EMFL facilities through a dedicated industrial liaisons officer, dedicated industrial access procedures, and metrology services adapted to industrial interests
• making industry aware of the frontier science being conducted at the EMFL sites by targeted outreach activities, participations to industrial exhibitions and continue to develop the EMFL Industrial Partner Club.
• development and strengthening of a global collaboration strategy based on a roadmap joint experiments high-fields/advances sources and a blue-print for international governance structure
• development of an EMFL magnet technology roadmap focusing on the improvement of energy management, materials and modelling tools.