News - SOLARIS National Synchrotron Radiation Centre - Jagiellonian University

Summary of the twelfth call for proposals

On 2 October, the twelfth call for proposals for beamtime at the SOLARIS Centre was closed. The International Evaluation Committee will once again have the opportunity to examine a record number of applications.

For the first time in this call, it was possible to request for a beamtime on the CIRI and POLYX beamlines. A total of seven beamlines and a cryomicroscope will be available to users. All applications will be reviewed by external experts in terms of formality, sample safety and the merit of the planned research work.
In the twelfth call for applications for research time on the SOLARIS infrastructure, a total of 169 applications were received. This result confirms an upward trend in the number of researchers interested in measuring at SOLARIS. Call after call, the Centre is receiving more and more applications. Since the previous call, we can boast an almost 8 per cent increase in the number of applications.
For the first time in the call, the CIRI beamline, using infrared radiation for advanced microscopy experiments, and the POLYX beamline, for X-ray microimaging and microspectroscopy, were made available. Beamtime on these lines was the subject of a over 20 proposals. Decisions on the allocation of beamtime will be known before the end of the year, in mid-December.
It is worth mentioning that the trend of nationality representation of the submitted applications continues. In the call in question, 29% of applications were submitted by researchers from abroad (Italy and Germany being the countries of origin of the largest number of researchers), while 71% were national projects. The three scientific disciplines most frequently applied for are physics, materials research and biotechnology, respectively. A hitherto unrepresented discipline is the humanities, which were the subject of four applications for the first time.
Research groups will be able to carry out their experiments using the SOLARIS infrastructure from March to August 2024.
We would like to remind you that submitting an application for a so-called 'rapid access' research infrastructure is possible. This mode makes it possible to check whether the planned experiment has a chance of being realized in the regular call for proposals or there is a need to carry out research quickly due to its potentially high scientific value.