At the left, Caterina Biscari, director of ALBA. At the right, Helena Pereira, president of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
Cerdanyola del Vallès, 23rd December 2020. Following-up on the Collaboration Agreement signed by the ALBA Synchrotron and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) on February 2019 aiming at strengthen the scientific collaboration between Portugal and Spain, a virtual meeting hosted by ALBA on the afternoon of the 17th of December was organized to disseminate further the ALBA Synchrotron among the Portuguese research community but most importantly to promote direct interaction between ALBA scientists, some representatives from the Spanish synchrotron users community and the Portuguese scientific research community.
The meeting gathered approximately 100 researchers from around 15 different Portuguese institutions. It started with a welcome by Prof. Helena Pereira, president of the FCT (Portugal) followed by a welcome and a description of the status and perspectives of the ALBA Synchrotron (Spain) by Caterina Biscari, director of ALBA. Next, there were talks by Klaus Attenkofer (ALBA Experiments Division head and Scientific director) and the heads of the different sections at the ALBA Experiments division: François Fauth, Judith Juanhuix and Manuel Valvidares. Four meetings were then held in parallel dedicated to the key scientific strategic areas: Batteries, Catalysis, Electronic materials and Nanomagnetism, and Life Sciences.
The last part of the meeting consisted in quick reports by the chairs of each of the four parallel meetings which were unanimous in the success of the meeting in finding potential projects for the future collaboration and matches between Portuguese and Spanish institutions in key areas of research. Both Pereira and Biscari were also very pleased to close the meeting by announcing the opening of the call for projects from 1 February to mid March, which will culminate by summer with the selection of four post-doctoral researchers that will work within the framework of the ALBA-FCT Iberian collaboration.
At the left, Klaus Attenkofer, Scientific director of ALBA. At the right, Judith Juanhuix, head of the Life Sciences section (Experiments division, ALBA).
At the left, François Fauth, head of the Chemistry and Materials Science section (Experiments division, ALBA). At the right, Manuel Valvidares, head of the Electronic and Magnetic Structure section (Experiments division, ALBA).
Some of the participants of the FCT-ALBA virtual meeting.
