14 September 2020

BigScience@LU • Academic input in Big Science facilities

The annual BigScience@LU event will be held on 5 November 2020 at LINXS Ideon and online via Zoom. This promises to be a day filled with inspiration, networking, and ecosystem building, involving the research community at Lund University, the facilities ESS, MAX IV, CERN, and ITER, and Swedish companies.

“We will be talking about how we can unify the Big Science community at LU to strengthen our voice, nationally and internationally,” says Lennart Gisselsson, Business Development and Project Management at Big Science Sweden.

The theme will be the ecosystem surrounding upstream deliveries to the research facilities that Sweden supports – technical development, research, and building and maintaining equipment – and how we sustain and develop the relevant skills and expertise for the future.

Last year’s conference focused on gathering proposals from the Lund University perspective for the upcoming Government Bill on Research. We will be discussing the outcome of this.

Why attend BigScience@LU?

Big Science facilities are not only important as major research tools for academia. The actual building and upgrading of these facilities drives the development of new, cutting-edge technologies and processes. This new technology not only boosts the Big Science community but can often be used in unrelated research areas and may have major impact on other societal challenges and innovation.

There are multiple benefits for academia when engaging in contributions to the upstream delivery of technology to Big Science facilities - scientific, technological and societal. Another possible benefit is new collaboration with industries that manufacture products used in Big Science.

This workshop focuses on Lund University's past, present, and future involvement in upstream delivery to Big Science facilities, lifting questions such as:

What is Lund University's track record in boosting Big Science, and what are our main strengths?
In which additional areas do we want to develop over the next ten years? How do we ensure a steady flow of expertise and skills, and educate the right students?
How do we both attract and maintain the right expertise at the university when the needs of these facilities fluctuate over time and development cycles?
How should we tackle the national issue of in-kind delivery to Big Science projects?

This event is co-hosted by Lund University, Big Science Sweden, and LINXS.