Expanding ESS moves Headquarters
The European Spallation Source project is growing rapidly, and ESS will move its Headquarters on 1 February 2012. To be able to continue the planned development of the ESS organisation, ESS needs larger, integrated and more functional premises than today.
The current European Spallation Source Headquarters are located in central Lund in Stora Algatan. Before the decision on the new Headquarters was taken, several different locations were assessed on the basis of several criteria, and the best option was chosen. In the new Headquarters, located within the new Medicon Village complex, ESS will have functional offices for the current staff and the necessary space to expand the activities according to plan. ESS is currently in an intensive recruitment phase, and is recruiting accelerator physicists, target physicists, instrument scientists, builders and planners, among others, that are needed to design and construct the research facility ESS.
The move will also mean that the main ESS offices, containing the technical and scientific planning teams, can be integrated with the ESS Programme Office. Integration of the different activities within ESS is a necessity for efficient planning of the future research facility.
- ESS is now approaching one hundred staff and growing rapidly. In the new Headquarters we can continue to expand adding the necessary technical expertise, and at the same time concentrate on our main task, planning the ESS. The move will mean that our current and future staff will be better equipped to focus on an often very complex planning work, says Colin Carlile, the ESS Director-General.
- Of course there are mixed feelings. Our office at Stora Algatan has seen us grow from a nucleus of two people to almost one hundred and has seen us win the site decision. I will personally be sad to move out from the middle of this lovely town, but look forward to a bright future.
Medicon Village is a life science village currently being built up in Lund.
- We also want to contribute to building up a strong and dynamic scientific environment around the ESS. The move to the life science-environment in Medicon Village will strengthen the interactions between ESS, MAXIV and the life science community, concludes Colin Carlile.
Besides the HQ in Lund, the ESS programme involves activities in many locations in 17 countries: at the future ESS Data Management and Software Centre in Copenhagen, at ESS Bilbao in Spain, and at the many laboratories, universities and research institutes all over the world who are the ESS collaboration partners.
For more information, please contact:
Colin Carlile, ESS Director-General. E-mail colin.carlile@esss.se, Tel. 46-(0)46-222 83 02
Marianne Ekdahl, Communications Officer Press & Politics. E-mail marianne.ekdahl@esss.se, Tel. 46-(0)46-222 83 89
ESS IN SHORT:
The European Spallation Source – the next generation facility for materials research and life science
The European Spallation Source (ESS) will be a multi-disciplinary research laboratory based on the world’s most powerful neutron source. ESS can be likened to a large microscope, where neutrons are used instead of light to study materials – ranging from polymers and pharmaceuticals to membranes and molecules – to gain knowledge about their structure and function. ESS will be up to 100 times better than existing facilities, opening up new possibilities for researchers in for example health, environment, climate, energy, transport sciences and cultural heritage.
ESS is an intergovernmental research infrastructure project, and it will be built in Lund in southern Scandinavia. At least 17 European countries will take part in the construction, financing and operation of the ESS. Sweden and Denmark will co-host the ESS and cover 50 percent of the 1,4 B€ investment costs and 20 percent of the operating costs together with the Nordic and Baltic states.
The European Spallation Source ESS AB is a public limited company, today owned by the Swedish and the Danish states. ESS AB is currently working on finalizing the ESS technical design, planning the future research at ESS, preparing for construction, and planning the future international ESS organisation. This is done in collaboration with a large number of international research institutes and laboratories. Construction is expected to start in 2013, the first neutrons to be produced in 2019 and the facility to be fully operational around 2025.
ESS is expected to support a user community of at least 5000 European researchers and will have great strategic importance for the development of the European Research Area. Near by there will be complementary laboratories, such as the synchrotron MAX IV in Lund and XFEL and PETRAIII in Hamburg.
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