NEutrons and PHotons Elevating Worldwide Science (NEPHEWS)

ongoing

NEutrons and PHotons Elevating Worldwide Science (NEPHEWS) will deliver access to the world-class collective of Europe’s premiere open advanced neutron (N), synchrotron (SR) and free-electron laser (FEL) complementary research infrastructures (RI), to promote curiosity driven excellence in research. In NEPHEWS the RI institute in a novel approach jointly with their 40k+ user base of scientists through Users Organisations to provide a user-driven access program targeting new and non-expert communities, with a focus on Widening countries, Ukraine and Africa, a priority. The bottom-up User-to-User-oriented approach aims to build an integrated European RI landscape involving LEAPS and LENS consortia and their European scientific user communities. NEPHEWS will provide 135 twinning experiments, successful piloted in the CALIPSOplus project, and 451 user experiments across European RI facilities. New and non-expert users receive in-depth hands-on expert training in twinning research experiments with expert-users. These actions are complimented with support in virtual access, workshops, schools and proposal writing. All build expertise, foster collaborations, and widen user access across the ERA. NEPHEWS will specifically engage user and scientific communities of selected priority countries via outreach visits at universities, supporting political dialogue with national funding authorities (NFAs). To this end, NEPHEWS will deliver quantitative reporting of its actions and use country-specific quantitative data from novel community analysis methods. This will be the basis for an informed science policy when advocating to NFAs on the merits and benefits of sustained nationally funded user access to these RI. NEPHEWS brings a paradigm shift in the ERA RI landscape by direct involvement of the user communities to instigate wider access across the most advanced RI of the world. The integration is simultaneously realized for the FEL, SR and N communities across the ERA.