EU project RIANA launched: A hub for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

More than 100 participants gathered on a hybrid meeting at DESY on 14-15 March to officially kick-off the new EU project RIANA. RIANA (standing for Research Infrastructure Access in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology) has officially been launched on 1 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.

At the kick-off meeting, future steps and the programme 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 following Laserlab-Europe infrastructures offer access to laser-related techniques: CALT, CELIA, CLF, CLL, CLPU, CLUR, CUSBO, FELIX, FERMI, HiLASE, INFLPR, LENS, LIDYL, LLC, LP3, MUT, and ULF-FORTH.

For more information, visit the RIANA website: https://riana-project.eu/