First meeting of ELI-CZ Consortium took place in Prague on 18th February 2009. Members of the Consortium as well as representatives of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and Academy of Sciences took part.
ELI-CZ Consortium is an association of 13 entities supporting the idea of implementing the ELI Project in the Czech Republic. The importance of this laser infrastructure was emphasized during the meeting by Bedřich Rus a Jan Řídký from the Institute of Physics of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The Institute is the coordinator of the project in the Czech Republic.
ELI is a project of a multifunctional laser with performance one hundred times higher than the performance of the most powerful existing lasers. This laser will be the core of application center for development of new materials, hadron therapy, compact ultraintensive sources of radiation and particles for basic research in quantum and relativistic Physics.
Members of the Consortium showed their interest in cooperation and defined activities, which they will work together on. Among others they include preparation of national program of fundamental scientific research and preparation of projects of applied research in ELI infrastructure, technological development and participation of the industry at building of ELI and development of student programs.
Czech Republic has a big chance of becoming host country for laser infrastructure ELI. Other candidate countries are France, Great Britain, Hungary and Romania. Final decision should be made in summer 2009.
Members of the Consortium ELI-CZ: České vysoké učení technické v Praze, Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Technická univerzita v Liberci, Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Univerzita Pardubice, Západočeská univerzita v Plzni, Vysoká škola chemicko-technologická v Praze, Ústav fyzikální chemie J. Heyrovského AV ČR, v. v. i., Ústav fyziky materiálů AV ČR, v. v. i., Ústav fyziky plazmatu AV ČR, v. v. i., Ústav přístrojové techniky AV ČR, v. v. i. a Fyzikální ústav AV ČR, v. v. i.
