Page 112 - ILL Annual Report 2019

TRAINING AND OUTREACH
STUDENT TRAINING
The ILL Graduate School has grown in strength over recent years as the ILL PhD programme has evolved. It provides training and funding for the equivalent of 40 full-time, three-year PhD students from different European countries. It also takes in a number of PhD students with external funding. By October 2019, a total of 48 PhD project applications had been received in response to our call for PhD proposals; these were being assessed at the time of writing. Five to ten ‘full-time-equivalent’ projects will be selected, prior to the recruitment of PhD students in 2020.
The year 2019 also saw the start of the InnovaXN PhD programme, financed by the EU via the Marie-Curie training programme. InnovaXN projects differ from the ILL’s other PhD projects in that they involve industrial partners; InnovaXN projects must have industrial applications. An important aspect of the programme is the few months during their PhD that these students spend on their industrial partner’s site. The InnovaXN programme will run for five years. Recruitment will begin in early 2020 for PhD students to work at
the ILL on the ten recently accepted projects; these students will start their PhD work in September. [see commentary below]
The International Summer School for undergraduate students, organised by the ILL and the ESRF, took place in September 2019. The school has been held every year since 2014 and allows undergraduate students from all our member countries
to spend a month on the site. The students follow a series of lectures and seminars on the fundamentals of X-rays and neutrons and their use in science today. They also each work on a personal project, supervised by the ILL or ESRF scientists and
PhD students. The ILL hosted nine such projects in 2019 (half of the 18 students). These were selected from approximately one hundred applications, from universities in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain and the UK.
The ILL welcomed a total of 71 trainees in 2019 (including 8 from the ILL–ESRF Summer School), of 21 different nationalities (including 9 German, 20 French, 10 British and 19 from other ILL member countries).
HERCULES SCHOOL
The Hercules School has been held every year since 1991. It is a one-month course on neutron and synchrotron radiation for condensed matter studies for students and young scientists. It includes lectures, hands-on sessions
and tutorials in small groups, a poster session, and visits to partner facilities.
The 2019 event was held from 18 March to 19 April and attracted over 140 applications. Sixty-four students attended, representing 23 different nationalities based in 16 different countries; most came from the European Union, but others came from Taiwan, India, Argentina, China and Russia. A special ‘Practicals and Tutorials’ session was organised, hosted by the different partner institutions in Grenoble and other European facilities.
More information is available at http://hercules-school.eu/.
Participants at the Hercules 2019 session.
ANNUAL REPORT 2019