16 December 2020

A Christmas message from Director Anna Hall

Dear All, We’re coming to the end of 2020 – an unusual year that brought a lot of new challenges… but also possibilities. Things have definitely not been as normal, but I think that Big Science Sweden has found a successful way to land in a virtual world. We have held a lot of constructive meeting arenas for industry, academia, institutes, research infrastructures, and international collaboration partners.

We’re currently summing up the Big Science Sweden Conference 2020, which attracted 245 delegates. We listened to interesting presentations from no fewer than ten international Big Science Organisations and 33 speakers, and we discussed technology needs, business, and possible collaborations in nine fields of technology. Participants took part in 179 1-to-1 meetings. I’m overwhelmed by the interest and engagement from our international research facilities, and I’m proud to be a part of the Big Science ecosystem in Sweden. Working together gives us great opportunities to develop an important platform for even stronger collaboration in the future.

During the year, Big Science Sweden set up a collaboration programme with CERN on Knowledge Transfer. We held our first joint event in the form of a Discovery Day, at which we discussed interesting topics such as digital solutions for tomorrow’s industry, solutions for sustainable transportation (trains, cars, aircraft), and high-performance applications in harsh environments. The event attracted a number of large Swedish companies, and we are now discussing how Swedish industry can collaborate more closely with CERN to solve future challenges. We look forward to starting a number of collaboration projects around Knowledge Transfer during 2021.

After a year with a lot of ‘new normal’, I wish you all a peaceful and joyful festive season. Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

With warm greetings,

Anna Hall