Speaker
Dr
MARINE MELKONYAN
(COORDINATOR OF THE NATIONAL CONTACT POINT FOR RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY "MISIS")
Description
M.K. Melkonyan, E.A. Levashov, Yu.O. Krasilnikova
National University of Science and Technology “MISIS”, Leninsky prospect, 4, Moscow, 119049, Russia, e-mail: fp7-infra@misis.ru
The term “research infrastructures” (RI) refers to facilities, resources and related services used by the scientific community to conduct top-level activities in all fields of science. This definition covers major scientific equipment or sets of instruments; knowledge-based resources such as collections, archives or data banks; e-Infrastructures (networks, computing resources, software).
Some research facilities, particularly in physics or astronomy (called global research infrastructures - GRI) are so large, complex or expensive that they require international cooperation for construction and operation and it is being impossible for one country or region alone to build and operate these facilities. The examples of GRIs are CERN: the European Organization for Nuclear Research; JINR: the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research; ESRF: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility; SKA: Square Kilometer Array, the next generation radio telescope.
The efficient planning, design, construction and operation of the global research infrastructures requires not only a sharing of costs, but also the sharing of knowledge. A Group of Senior Officials (GSO) on GRIs established in 2008 strives to reach a common understanding on matters such as governance, funding and management of global research infrastructures. Russia is the member of the GSO group.
According to the last GSO Progress report 2015, the current list of the national based research infrastructures of global interest covers 39 RIs from 14 countries; among them there are six Russian Mega science projects.
A key area of Russia-EU S&T cooperation involves the joint development of GRIs. Russia is a partner of a number of research infrastructure initiatives located in Europe: the EU X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL); the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR); the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER); the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, CERN); the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). All these projects have a global dimension and participants and are located on the roadmap of ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures.
Since its foundation in 2002, ESFRI has played a leading role in coordination of research infrastructures across Europe and development of integrated and coherent approach for policy making in this field.
The new ESFRI roadmap 2016 consists of 21 ESFRI Projects with a high degree of maturity and 29 ESFRI Landmarks - RIs that reached the implementation phase by the end of 2015. The Landmarks in the area of physical sciences and engineering cover 11 internationally well-known facilities: E-ELT –European Extremely Large Telescope; ELI- European Light infrastructure, EMFL- European magnetic field laboratory; ESRF UPGRADES; European spallation source; European XFEL, FAIR, HL-HLC; ILL20/20, SKA; SPIRAL 2. The impact of many of the ESFRI research infrastructures is global and this has prompted a reflection in two main fora: the Global Science Forum of OECD and the GSO group tasked with defining a strategy for GRIs.
Developing excellent RIs for physical sciences and engineering is one of the top European priorities. Bringing together scientists and users of the Europe’s major projects with their counterparts all over the world has an intention to generate new synergies that will stimulate a truly global integration of existing infrastructures. The key of this integration process will be the efficient access to and the open sharing of data and information produced by the RIs.
This work was supported under the grant No. 14.572.21.0004 of the Federal Targeted Program for Research and Development in Priority Areas of Development of the Russian Scientific and Technological Complex for 2014-2020.
Primary author
Dr
MARINE MELKONYAN
(COORDINATOR OF THE NATIONAL CONTACT POINT FOR RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY "MISIS")
Co-authors
Prof.
Evgeny Levashov
(National University of Science and Technology "MISiS")
Ms
YULIA KRASILNIKOVA
(THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY "MISIS")
