It has been announced that Estonia and Finland will finance one of the beamlines at the MAX IV Laboratory in Lund, Sweden. This is the first major international investment in MAX IV and is worth around EUR 4 million.
The new MAX IV facility already has seven beamlines financed by the Wallenberg Foundation and Swedish universities. The eighth beamline, with Estonian and Finnish funding, will be located on the 1.5 GeV ring, known as the ‘small ring’, which will be used to study materials using soft X-rays. Research with soft X-rays has been a particular strength of both MAX-lab and a number of research teams in Estonia and Finland for several decades.
The eighth beamline is being financed by the Estonian Government, which is investing EUR 3 million, and a Finnish consortium financed by the Academy of Finland, which is investing around EUR 1 million. “This announcement is an incredibly important milestone in our efforts to become an international laboratory. We have a number of contacts in northern Europe and are working to bring in more international investors. We hope that this decision will be the first of many like it”, says Christoph Quitmann, director of the MAX IV Laboratory.
It is no coincidence that the first international beamline at MAX IV is to be financed by Estonia and Finland.
“This is the natural continuation of a long collaboration between MAX-lab and these two countries. Since the late 1980s, many Estonian and Finnish research teams have used MAX-lab for their experiments and have contributed to the development of the laboratory”, says Jesper Andersen, Science Director at the MAX IV Laboratory.
“The beamline in Lund is an important part of the strategy for research infrastructure that Estonia has recently adopted. Through participation in the MAX IV project Estonian research will be strengthened and get more international attention, says Marco Kirm, Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Tartu.
More information:
Christoph Quitmann, Director MAX IV Laboratory
Phone: +46 766-32 33 14
E-mail: Christoph.Quitmann@maxlab.lu.se
Jesper Andersen, Science Director, MAX IV Laboratory
Phone: +46 702-16 92 96
E-mail: Jesper.Andersen@maxlab.lu.se