ESUO

The European Synchrotron Users Organisation (ESUO) was founded in 2010, and an Irish delegate has been in attendance since the 2nd ESUO meeting in 2010.

The ESUO has in October 2014 published a manifesto in connection with a desire to lobby the European Commission with regards to a future Integrating Activity under the H2020 Research Infrastructures Work Programme call that is adequate to the needs and desires of the 25,000+ accelerator-based photon science user community of the European SR and FEL light source facilities.

The most significant publications from the organisation, in reverse chornological order, are as follows:

• ESUO brochure – October 2014 – “TOWARDS EVEN BRIGHTER EUROPEAN PHOTON SCIENCE – A manifesto for a truly European photon science community“. This emphasizes the need for a “floodlight” approach to funding all aspects of the diverse community of accelerator-based photon sciences on an equal access footing across all EU member nations with an emphasis on scientific excellence and merit, as opposed to a fractured “spotlight” approach currently favoured under the existing Horizon 220 Integrating Activities Work Programme calls.
• “The benefit of the European User Community from transnational access to national radiation facilities” – Letter to Journal of Synchrotron Radiation – April 2014. The Irish delegate present at the 6th ESUO meeting is a signatory. This letter highlighted the dangers that were realised in the lack of an appropriate topic in the first Horizon 2020 Integrating Activities Work Programme call that the consortium of SR and FEL facilities could adequately respond to on behalf of the very large photon sciences community (>25,000 users), and which would require justifiably commensurate budgets for cohesive TNA programmes to replace CALIPSO and BioStruct-X.
• Letter to EC – November 2013– “LETTER OF CONCERN: TransNational Access in Horizon 2020″. This letter forewarned the European Commission of the danger of the European Commission in insufficiently taking into account the continued needs of the SR and FEL facilities and user communities in preparing the first Horizon 2020 Integrating Activities Work Programme.
• Formation of ESUO – April 2010 – the formation of the ESUO was in part stimulated by the ELISA programme to establish a vocal European wide user community representative body, and in response to the perceived need to lobby on behalf of the large European photon sciences community.

Since ESUO has formed, one of its objective has been to see a representative national user organisation (NUO) formed within each member country. In 2014 we are now able to number Ireland as the latest member nation represented by ESUO to now have its’ own NUO – the newly formed Irish Synchrotron Users Organisation.

Currently there are 20 active research groups in Ireland who use SR, FEL facilities as well as Neutron and Muon Beam (NB/MB) facilities. Approximately 110-120 researchers, apart from the PIs, are involved in these groups over half of whom have performed experiments at these facilities.