January 22, 2021 to March 5, 2021
Europe/Rome timezone

This website is dedicated to the preparation of a proposal requesting a funding from the EU, for our community performing research in the fields of fundamental and applied nuclear science. The proposal will respond to the next European call for Research Infrastructures (RI), within the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022. It will build on the success of ENSAR2 in providing free access to our RIs including travel and subsistence for scientists participating in experimental projects approved within the framework of the proposal. A difference, with respect to ENSAR2, is that the new proposal does not have the possibility to include Joint Research Activities or Networking Activities directly. However, it supports the activities necessary to the improvement of our experimental facilities and/or the successful implementation and interpretation of experiments. Furthermore, some non-European RIs with unique and/or complementary facilities to those of European RIs can be considered on the same footing as our European RIs.

Based on the preferences expressed by the Steering Committee of the currently running ENSAR2 project (http://www.ensarfp7.eu/), the new project, if successful, will be coordinated by Navin Alahari (GANIL), with the INFN as Coordinating Institution and Maria Colonna (INFN-LNS) as Deputy Coordinator. 
The deadline for submission is expected to be around the end of July 2021 (the exact final date is not yet known). Considering this tight schedule and the very large stakes involved for our community, it is important that we must be well prepared to respond to the call with a comprehensive and timely proposal.

The main objective of these new actions is the provision of services to RI to conduct curiosity-driven research (including possibly a restricted number of non-EU labs) with breakthrough and leading-edge activities. Unlike the last call, the present call relates directly only to the use of the RI and connected activities.

The call is built on the following pillars:
1) Wider, most comprehensive portfolio of improved RI services relevant for frontier research; simplified and more efficient access procedures to the best research infrastructures.
2) Training of new generation of researchers.
3)Cross-disciplinary fertilisations and a wider sharing of information, knowledge and technologies across scientific fields.
4) Data management.

The proposal must develop around the above pillars, strong physics and (technically) innovative ideas. We have already contacted an extensive list of directors of laboratories, with the aim of getting a global view of strengths, opportunities and perspectives for their laboratories.  In parallel, it is imperative to identify concrete research projects and innovative ideas around which the proposal will be built. All activities should be focused around the RI (including theoretical support, technical developments and interdisciplinary research), and supporting R&D to improve the facilities. The call clearly points also to the training of young researchers, along the activities carried out at and around the RI. The suitable grouping of different RI with common interests and expertise would sustainably strengthen our coherence in answering this call.

We eagerly look forward to your individual and/or as a research or technical group contribution by submitting a short text (1-2 pages) with suggestions for suitable activities, to be uploaded on this website (see the Instructions page). If you wish to submit longer texts, please feel free to do so.
Your original ideas are what will decide the successful outcome for this call. 

We kindly ask you to send your inputs by the 5th of March. This will give enough time to discuss further on the submitted ideas before the next steps. To further facilitate the dissemination of information and brainstorming for our reply to the call of the EU, a Zoom-Town meeting will be organized around late March 2021 (an in-person meeting looks very difficult, extrapolating the current status of the global health situation).

As part of the process, your essential and vital inputs will be through forming a group/committee of experts who will help in writing the different parts of the proposal. In parallel, further aspects related to administrative handling and connections with the EU are and will be continued to be looked into. The committee will study the best way to integrate the relevant ideas into the proposal.

We look forward to your valuable inputs (latest by the 5th of March), around which the strategy for our proposal will be built. Your suggestions are very important to our reply to the next EU call for research infrastructures, also to better identify crucial common goals and new synergies.

Thanking you in advance for your help and time for our community.

Navin and Maria

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