More than 110 enthusiastic scientists from the 17 ESS partner countries met in September to plan and discuss the in-kind contributions to thescientific instruments that will be installed in the facility. The meeting, named ESS In-kind Contributions Meeting for Neutron Science for the ESS - IKON-1, was held in Lund, Sweden, close to the ESS headquarter.

– We have set ourselves an ambitious goal, says Dimitri Argyriou, ESS Science Director.

– We will have to think out of the box to develop new instruments that will be able to draw all of the benefits from the ESS long pulse beam characteristics, while foreseeing the needs of the science community 10, 20 and even 30 years into the future, says Ken Andersen, Head of Instrumentation at ESS.

The first meeting provided information on the progress of the ESS and the current status of instrument development, as well as valuable discussions on the choice and design of the best possible instruments for ESS. There was also presentations on in-kind contributions from Germany, Denmark and Switzerland.

– The in.kind contributions are vital, says Dimitri Argyriou. We could bot assemble a suite of instruments without the expertise of the ESS partner laboratories and research institutes.

The next IKON-meeting will be held in Malmö, Sweden on 9-10 February. The registration for IKON-2 will soon open on http://esss.se.