20.05.2014

DESY intensifies cooperation with Swedish research institutions

DESY is expanding its cooperation with Swedish research institutions, agreed DESY Director Professor Helmut Dosch with Swedish science representatives during a visit to Stockholm. Dosch was part of a twelve-member scientific delegation to Sweden who accompanied Hamburg´s First Mayor Olaf Scholz, along with a business delegation. Other members of the scientific delegation included representatives of University Hospital Eppendorf, the University of Applied Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

DESY director Helmut Dosch, MAX IV Laboratory deputy director Peter Andersson and MAX IV Laboratory director Christoph Quitmann (from left to right) signed an agreement for more intensive cooperation.

At a visit of the Karolinska Institute and the Royal Institute of Technology KTH in Stockholm the delegation and their Swedish colleagues discussed closer cooperation of Hamburg´s research institutions with both organisations. In the evening at the German Embassy, Helmut Dosch signed an agreement with the director of the Swedish synchrotron MAX IV Laboratory, Dr. Christoph Quitmann, for more intensive cooperation, particularly in the fields of beam optics and instrumentation for high-intensity X-ray light sources.

“Swedish institutions are already involved in our X-ray light source PETRA III and the new infection research centre CSSB at DESY; and we have common projects and technologies with the MAX IV Laboratory,” says Dosch. “By further strengthening co-operation and exchange with the excellent Swedish research institutions we want to maximise the innovation potential of the Baltic region.”

Science and research were among the main topics of the Sweden trip by Mayor Scholz, who was also accompanied by Hamburg´s Science Senator Dorothee Stapelfeldt. In the continuation of the “Science Link” project coordinated by DESY the KTH will now also be involved. The Science Link Network was created to strengthen cooperation in science and innovation at large research infrastructures in the Baltic region.

DESY has had close research ties to Sweden for years: the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has been using DESY synchrotron radiation sources for over 30 years. It has a strong materials research division and will have a decisive part in the “Sweden beamline” designed for this purpose in one of two new experimental halls at DESY´s synchrotron radiation source PETRA III. The Karolinska Institute is heavily involved in infection research and has already established a junior research group at the Centre for Structural Systems Biology CSSB, which is currently under construction at DESY. MAX IV is a high-brilliance X-ray source which is being built at Lund University in southern Sweden and expected to become operational in 2016. The linear accelerator for the injection of electrons into this machine also uses DESY technologies.