The meeting of the realization team of the world’s most efficient laser was held at the Czech Embassy in Paris. Project is to be delivered in Central and Eastern Europe until 2015. Laser itself will be built in the Czech Republic whereas other infrastructure parts will be in Romania and Hungary. The Czech Republic was represented by Vlastimil Růžička, the government representative for the project ELI and by Jaroslav Kuba, the chief executive for European funds of the Ministry od Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS).
The meeting’s main topic was to inform all invited scientific communities, public and political spheres about important milestones of ELI Preparatory Phase which has lasted for three years till today.
Maria Douka, the representative of European Commission from DG Research, in her presentation of ELI Preparatory Phase said: „ELI project is for the European Union the first real output of a common union policy on the research. It is also a great lesson and experience for all of us to realize a project of this magnitude in different countries with people of different mentalities. According to the European Commission, ELI project is the most significant because of its location in the new member states of the European Union. It’s kind of the evolution of cooperation between communities, which began 20 years ago and its result is the ending of the preparatory phase of this important project. ELI project is a huge success. ”
Another aim of the meeting was to introduce the mission and the working plan of the subsequent implementation phase, which has just started today. This phase was introduced by three plenipotentiaries representing the three ELI pillars, Vlastimil Růžička from the Czech Republic, Aladár Czitrovstky from Hungary and Nicolai Victor Zamfir who is responsible for the implementation of ELI project in Romania. Vlastimil Růžička commented upcoming phase in following words: „The launching of the next phase of ELI project, called ELI Delivery Consortium, is a historical moment for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. We are really next to the initiation of construction of a pan-European research infrastructure, which will be for the fist time in history located in the new member states of the European Union. For aforementioned countries it will be the strong impulse for development and reinforcement of scientific communities’ prestige as well as for the development of the particular regions.“
ELI project, especially its Czech part, will be founded from the European Union, mostly by Operational Programme Research and Development for Innovation. Responsibility of its draft and implementation lies with Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. „ELI project has become for the last years the flagship not only of the Czech scientific community but also of the Ministry of Education. We have been negotiating for the last few months with the European Commission to have this project approved in full scope, so we can follow up with our agreements and plans regarding drawdown of almost 7 billion CZK for the world’s most efficient scientific infrastructure in soonest possible manner“, commented the approval process the chief executive of the management of Operational Programmes, Jaroslav Kuba from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports.
Together with the sole laser technology, which is approximately as big as an airport hall, supportive infrastructure for laser operations, employing more than 250 people, will be built in Central Bohemia’s Dolní Břežany. Extremely intense and ultrashort pulses of light and particles that laser will produce will find many applications in research, such as chemistry, biology, medical sciences and the development of new materials, but also in practical applications.
Today the implementation phase of the project (Consortium ELI-DC) has been started. Its main goal is to create an organizational structure for centrally controlled pan-European ELI research infrastructure, consisting of three complementary pillars based in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania.
Interest in membership in the consortium has been already formally expressed by Germany, Greece and Bulgaria. So far, the latest candidate to join the ELI-DC is Armenia.
Festive afternoon was concluded with the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee ELI, Toshikiho Tajimi, lecture on “Extra-Light-Infrastructure: Icebreaker and integrator of 21st Century Science”. Among the attendees a Nobel Prize holder for Physics in 1997, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, could be spotted. He considers that “Eli opens new, extremely interesting research horizons which Toshiki Tajima so brilliantly presented.
