XFEL: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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2021/12/17
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Season's greetings from the Management Board

  

Dear colleagues, users, collaborators and friends of European XFEL,

2021 was another challenging, but overall very successful year for European XFEL. Despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic we - in close collaboration with our users - managed to perform a good range of important and exciting experiments on all six instruments with only a small delay to the restart at the beginning of 2021. Experiments this year included several contributing to the fight against COVID-19 and European XFEL has shown its capacities to react quickly, focusing a part of the user programme on emerging scientific questions.

We were happy to meet many users on-site in the second half of 2021 and also to greet numerous users online. We are getting better and better at accommodating online users as well as hosting hybrid meetings and events, although we are still missing the live exchange with our collaborators and colleagues we have only seen on screens for a long time now.

The accelerator has been working reliably throughout 2021 with very few disturbances to the user programme. At the same time, the accelerator staff were able to make significant advances in photon delivery capabilities such as achieving lasing at 30 keV, stable self-seeding options to the user programme, two colour mode of operation and the release of the operation constraints on the pulse delivery in the experiment hall. With the introduction of the Data Operation Center we added an extra dimension for a smooth and efficient operation during experiments, which is greatly appreciated by all parties benefitting from the high service level.

Looking back on 2021 we are confident that 2022 will be an even more successful year – despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on many aspects of operation and the daily lives of our staff and friends.

We are grateful for the continued support we receive from our partners, shareholders and users. In addition, we would like to explicitly thank our staff, our colleagues at DESY and our users for their commitment and dedication, which has led to the successes of the current year. For 2022, we hope to continue our fruitful collaborations and look forward to greeting many users and guests again, both online and on-site!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Prof. Robert Feidenhans’l and Dr. Nicole Elleuche, on behalf of the European XFEL Management Board