A total of 205 proposals have been received in the ALBA Synchrotron 2016-I call to be allocated in the period January-June 2016.

The call for proposals for the period 2016-I was closed last September 7th with a new record of participation: 205 proposals (2,773 shifts). With respect to the 2015-I, the demand has increased 5% (196 proposals). 2015-I is the last call comparable to the present one, since the XALOC beamline opens for proposals only once per year.

The photoemission spectroscopy and microscopy beamline, CIRCE, and BOREAS, devoted to resonant absorption and scattering, have been the most demanded beamlines. In particular, the Near Ambient Pressure Photoemission endstation has experienced the biggest increase with a total of 28 proposals (468 shifts).

According to the research area, proposals are from materials science and structure (30%), followed by hard condensed matter, electronic and magnetic properties (23%), chemistry (19%), macromolecular crystallography (12%), biology (8%), soft condensed matter and biomaterials (5%) and environment and cultural heritage (3%).

In this call, the international participation has increased once again. 58% of the proposals came from Spanish institutions – mainly from Catalonia (39%), Madrid (30%), Comunidad Valenciana (12%) and the Bask Country (10%) - while 38% came from European countries and 5% from international institutions.

Now all these proposals will be evaluated by the scientific panel, composed by international researchers from different research specialties. Results will be published in December 2015.

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