Page 13 - ILLS Annual Report 2018

THE VIBRANT scientific life at the ILL is centred
on our interaction with the user community. Over time, this has evolved into a subtle balance between experiments, publications, studentships, PhD projects, seminars, workshops and so on.
This year was a good one for experiments, with three cycles of reactor operation allowing the backlog from 2017 to be absorbed. It was also a good year for scientific output, which typically reflects experiments performed
two years earlier. In particular, the trend towards a higher proportion of high-impact publications observed in 2017, together with an increasing number of publications using data from more than one instrument, has continued in 2018. The scientific highlights in the following pages illustrate this high-quality output from ILL experiments and, in many cases, complementary measurements at other facilities and with other techniques.
In 2018, the ILL hosted more than 50 seminars and colloquia and was involved in organising more than
25 scientific events. Five workshops covering interfaces, energy materials, magnetism, spectroscopy and dynamics were grouped together to form the basis of the ILL-ESS User Meeting, which took place last October. More than 500 participants attended the meeting, forcing us to close registration early because of the limited capacity of the venue. In May, the Nuclear and Particle Physics group organised its ‘user meeting’—particle physics at neutron sources—which attracted around 150 participants and included a celebration of 50 years since the discovery
of ultra-cold neutrons. Bringing together more than 650 scientists, these two events testify to the vitality of neutron science in Europe.
The physical foundation of the vibrant user community
at the ILL is its state-of-the-art infrastructure. As described elsewhere in this report, the Endurance programme is now in full swing, with PANTHER, the new time-of-flight spectrometer, and SuperSUN, a new UCN source, to
be commissioned in the first cycle of 2019. There are, however, other ingredients for success, such as the external reviews of instruments—IN16b and D33 in 2018—and the internal monitoring of instrument groups— Large Scale Structures and Nuclear and Particle Physics groups in 2018—which help to ensure that our hardware and services are optimally aligned with current and future user needs. In addition, there are many smaller projects and support services that make important contributions
SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHTS
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to the overall user experience. For example, a single crystal, X-ray diffractometer has been ordered which will make corresponding neutron diffraction experiments more efficient, while the Partnership for Soft Condensed Matter received 15 applications for around six new scientific partners. Instruments and services are what we provide, but how we provide them is also evolving: flexible use of beamtime is increasing through Director’s Discretionary Time, which actually involves evaluation by the subcommittees; and Easy Access for short measurements on mail-in samples is now available on all the condensed matter science instruments.
Looking ahead, the future depends on young scientists
and new users. The ILL’s PhD programme is flourishing, with a cohort of about 40 students of which one-third
are renewed each year. In 2018 we, along with the ESRF, submitted a COFUND-ITN application to the European Horizon-2020 programme, focusing on innovation with neutrons and X-rays. We were delighted to learn recently that this InnovaXN project will be funded, providing 40 PhD studentships at the ILL and the ESRF. There will be open calls in 2020 and 2021 for projects, which must involve an industry partner, so watch our website for more information! New users are equally essential in developing the use of neutrons, and we have initiated a study to carefully map our user base both geographically and scientifically. The results will form the basis of an outreach campaign in 2020−2021, during a long shutdown in which more new guides and instruments will be installed. We are preparing for the future provision of beamtime, when there will be fewer time-consuming reactor developments (e.g. post-Fukushima work) and maintenance (e.g. beam-tube renewals), although operating cycles will still have to be balanced with the roll-out of the second phase of Endurance.
We look forward, with you, to more great science in 2019 and beyond...
Mark R. Johnson
Associate Director,
Head of Science Division
www.ill.eu