A CRISP with four flavours

Large research infrastructures like the ESRF are built on making available to scientists the latest in technology for use in scientific experiments. This often requires joint R&D efforts, and the CRISP Project is bringing together eleven main players from across Europe to address four key technology areas for the big science of tomorrow. CRISP was launched on 17 October at the Czech Embassy in Paris.

The acronym CRISP stands for “Cluster of Research Infrastructures for Synergies in Physics”. This is a 3-year project partly funded by the European Commission with 12 million Euros from the 7th Framework Programme. CRISP will come in four flavours of technological R&D: particle accelerators; large-scale physics instruments and experiments; detectors and data acquisition technologies; IT and data management systems. 

The participants at the CRISP kick-off meeting in the Czech embassy in Paris.

Progress in accelerator technology is essential to provide research infrastructures with the best possible sources of X-rays, ions and neutrons, and to tackle tomorrow’s challenges in nuclear and high-energy physics. Joint developments for novel types of large-scale physics experiments and their related instrumentation will create new scientific opportunities, also across many other fields of science. New initiatives and approaches are required to cope with the ever-increasing flow of data from large experiments, and a joint effort will establish the technological base for adequate platforms for the processing and storage of, and access to these data.

Within the CRISP Project, the eleven participating research entities will exchange know-how and combine their complementary expertise, ensuring cost-efficient and coherent development of new technologies. Such synergies are crucial to respond to a rapidly evolving and internationally mobile community of scientists using these large-scale research facilities. As major players in cutting-edge science, they also contribute to the technological progress needed for tackling big societal challenges in health, environment, sustainable energy, transport and communication.

The eleven partners of the CRISP Project are listed on the roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). They are under construction (ELI, ESS, EuroFEL, European XFEL, ILC-HiGrade and SKA), or research infrastructures in operation undergoing an important upgrade (ESRF, GSI-FAIR, ILL, SLHC and GANIL-SPIRAL2). The CRISP project is coordinated by the ESRF.

For more detailed information on CRISP, including how to take part in the various projects, please go to http://www.crisp-fp7.eu/

Top image: The logo of the CRISP Project