LEAPS
League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources
The last General Assembly elected Jean Dailant, Director General of SOLEIL as the next LEAPS vice-chair.
“One of the biggest challenges we will face in the coming years will be convincing the EC to design tools for analytic facilities at the level of our contribution to European science and innovation, building on the success of LEAPS-INNOV and to demonstrate that working together we are much more than 19 light sources.”
Jean Daillant will start his mandate on January 1st, 2022.
Last October, LEAPS established a new taskforce with the mandate to present a statement on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Anti-discrimination and collect the numerous relative activities available at the different LEAPS facilities.
All LEAPS facilities address these important topics and the taskforce is preparing a dedicated brochure, which will collect and summarize them all. In the meantime, during the month of May, some of these best practices have been presented on LEAPS social media channels through the social media campaign dedicated to the European Diversity Month. #EUDiversityMonth.
LEAPS-INNOV has officially started earlier this month and it is already progressing full steam ahead. The project not only brings together all LEAPS partners, but also starts to form much closer relations to industrial partners, which are of major importance for such a technology-driven consortium.
142 participants gathered virtually last week to officially kick-off the project. Two days of presentations and discussions among the nine work packages as well as two closed sessions dedicated to the Executive Board and the Governing Board defined the steps and future program for the next four years. “The goal is to identify different approaches and actions for partnerships with industry in order to develop a strategy for long-term industry engagement for LEAPS on a European level” comments Elke Plönjes, scientific coordinator of LEAPS-INNOV.
The focus remains the implementation of new strategies and activities for long-term partnerships between industry and European light sources, specifically synchrotrons and free electron lasers, with their numerous users, including high-impact industrial applications. It will contribute to solving key technological challenges for over 50 facilities in Europe and worldwide, and, in particular, for the next generation of photon sources, diffraction-limited storage rings and the still novel X-ray FELs. LEAPS-INNOV aspires to strengthen highly specialized European SMEs for the market of light sources worldwide.
Also, LEAPS-INNOV aims to kick-start the implementation of the LEAPS Technology Roadmap. At the same time, the consortium will strive to foster a partnership with European industry through open innovation by offering joint technological developments and advanced research capabilities with LEAPS members for industry as collaborators, supplier and user.