A hub for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
More than 100 participants gathered on a hybrid meeting at DESY on 14-15 March, 2024 to officially kick-off the new EU project RIANA. RIANA (standing for Research Infrastructure Access in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology) has officially been launched on 01 March to offer access to Europe’s leading facilities in nanoscience and nanotechnology that are at the heart of the development of new materials for prosperity and sustainability. The RIANA project provides the user community with a unique platform of 69 infrastructures from 22 European countries, including synchrotron, electron microscopy, laser, ion beam, neutron, clean room, and soft matter research infrastructures as well as high performance computing. Beyond standard user access to single facilities, RIANA offers a single-point access and a particularly strong user support by a network of junior scientists.
Picture of of participants at the RIANA project kick-off meeting
At the kick-off meeting, future steps and the program for the next four years were defined in two days of presentations and discussions on the six work packages. “The goal is to provide interdisciplinary access to the large and diverse set of outstanding instruments available in RIANA for research and development in nanoscience and nanotechnology. A team of junior scientists, in close contact with experienced senior scientists, will provide users with a comprehensive service from assistance in writing proposals to hands-on experiment support and data analysis,” comments Michael Stuckelberger (DESY), scientific coordinator of the RIANA project.
RIANA will engage with academic and industrial users via a rolling call system and promote experiments that combine different facilities and techniques. This combination of scientific tools will enable new approaches and an expansion of the user community, paving the way for accelerated innovation based on nanomaterials. The synchrotron SOLEIL is a major partner in the Riana project, offering future users direct access to its infrastructure, and in particular to its beamlines.
RIANA unlocks 35000 hours access to Europe’s leading facilities in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.