Analytical Research Infrastructures as key resources for the five Horizon Europe Missions

Moon-shot missions, such as those funded by Horizon Europe, require exceptional solutions, and the world-leading Analytical Research Infrastructures of Europe (ARIEs) are one of the key places where researchers can work towards those solutions. The ARIE Joint Position Paper has recently been published highlighting how the common, complementary approach will help address the societal challenges of the Horizon Europe Missions framework program.

“ARIEs provide unique windows into the workings of the world around us”, says Caterina Biscari, Chair of LEAPS and Director of the ALBA Synchrotron in Spain. “The cross-border cooperation within Europe allows for harnessing the power of its analytical research infrastructures collectively, to fuel the cutting-edge R&D required by the five Horizon Europe Missions. Nowhere else in the world is this readily possible.”

The ARIEs are centers of scientific and technological excellence, delivering services, data and know- how to a growing and diverse user community of more than 40,000 researchers in academia and industry, across a range of domains: the physical sciences, energy, engineering, the environment and the earth sciences, as well as medicine, health, food and cultural heritage. They include powerful photon sources, such as synchrotrons, laser systems and free-electron lasers; sources of neutrons, ions and other particle beams; and facilities dedicated to advanced electron-microscopy and high magnetic fields.

To address the Missions, the transversal platforms of ARIEs will collaborate amongst themselves and with the Mission specialists at unprecedented levels. They will build and exploit open networks to share knowledge and skills, to coordinate access, to prepare samples, and to create the sample environments required for experiments under real conditions; in doing so, they will use the new European Open Science Cloud.

The ARIEs provide free access to the scientific user community based upon scientific excellence and open data. Access to the ARIEs is equally being made simpler and smarter, more democratised and less reliant on travel.

ICFO & Laserlab-Europe

Laserlab-Europe, the Integrated Initiative of European Laser Research Infrastructures, is one of the infrastructure that forms part of ARIEs. The consortium comprises 33 major laser research infrastructures across 16 European countries and offers free access to its unique research infrastructures. Its main objectives are to maintain a sustainable inter-disciplinary network of European national laboratories; to strengthen the European leading role in laser research through Joint Research Activities; and to offers access to state-of-the-art facilities to researchers worldwide. In particular, the Attoscience and Ultrafast Optics facility at ICFO is member of the Laserlab-Europe infrastructure and offers access of its facilities to researchers from all fields of science and from any laboratory in order to perform world-class research. It is specialized on high average power, few-cycle and CEP stable sources at long wavelength.