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Outreach with a twist

With travel largely curtailed, our industry outreach moved to digital channels. Working with virtual B2B, virtual exhibition booths, webinars and social media such as LinkedIn, the BDO team kept our visibility high. The virtual tools and electronic worlds of Zoom, BlueJeans, Teams, etc., opened the doors to engaging with new and existing audiences.

The BDO team and industry liaisons prepared a short season of webinars aimed at the general industry researcher. Four webinars were made in open mode and several in private to our existing clients. The open webinars covered computed tomography (by E.Boller), soft matter techniques (M. Sztucki), structural biology for ligand binding (R. Talon) and topography (T.N. Tran Caliste). All of the webinars are available on replay on the ESRF industry Youtube playlist. We plan additional webinar topics for 2022.

Although travel was not possible for most of 2021, there were some windows for going out and meeting people in real life. Highlights were RDV Carnot (Lyon), TechConnect (Malmö) and The Battery Show (Stuttgart). In all three events, the ESRF was present on a booth and/or presenting, and in partnership with either the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and/or Grenoble s GIANT innovation campus. RDV Carnot included a special Journée Santé , focusing on the role of research infrastructures for defeating diseases such as COVID-19 and cancer. Organised by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI, A. Leservot) in partnership with many national French research infrastructures and international ones with French funding, the event was part of the ENRIITC (www. enriitc.eu) programme of outreach towards industry. The meeting tested a mixed in-person and online approach with about 50 participants in person and a further 50 via online platforms. The round table debate with high- level representatives welcomed from the industrial and academic scientific worlds is being converted to a summary paper of particular importance in the context

of both the French Health 2030 programme and engaging research infrastructures in the drive for better health and medicine, and with the French Presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2022.

Sharing ESRF technology

The ESRF is rich with advanced instrumentation, created by experienced engineers and technicians and proven on our accelerator and beamlines. These are, of course, designed for the ESRF, but they are more or less all available to be used by other light sources or licensed to companies. In 2021, the ESRF has continued to deliver instrumentation to clients, by our high-performance scintillators or crystal analysers as routine products, or a full FRELON detector system to Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility and a magnetic measurement bench to SEFTech, an SME based in Toulouse. SEFTech will use the bench to enhance its service offering, which is already having an impact in winning them new business.

Looking towards 2022

The coming year will also undoubtedly be challenging, as were 2020 and 2021, but also full of opportunity to support European companies and, indeed, industry worldwide. We will be aiming to continue to grow our service offer, tailoring and matching the ESRF capacities and skills to industry needs. For this, we will look forward to welcoming a new permanent business development officer to the BDO team during early 2022, working with the existing team, our colleagues at the ILL, at Grenoble s GIANT innovation campus and beyond to nurture our engagement with industry.

As ever, don t hesitate to contact us if you d like the ESRF to stop by and visit your company to listen to your R&D challenges and to explain how the ESRF s synchrotron X-rays can help

E. MITCHELL