On Monday in Delft, the projects for major scientific infrastructure – which had previously been selected for the national GWI 2024 roadmap – were presented in a festive ceremony. Two of these are led by Nikhef.
In the presence of Rianne Letschert, Minister for Education, Culture and Science, the eleven plans for embedding scientific research in the Netherlands were briefly outlined. Funding for these projects had already been announced last November.
These are large-scale research facilities that can be used by multiple researchers and institutions. Funding for these has been secured for ten years. “Focused on national and even international collaboration,” said NWO President Marcel Levi.
Minister Letschert said she was proud of the proposed projects, which range from new MRI equipment and electron microscopes to biomedical and sociological databases and simulators for power grids. She further emphasised that scientific institutions would do well to seek early collaboration with vocational and higher vocational education institutions during implementation.
Nikhef is the lead organisation for two of the eleven approved roadmap projects, crucial in the development of high energy physics.
The KM3NeT++ consortium, comprising Nikhef, the University of Amsterdam (UvA), NIOZ, Leiden University and the Netherlands eScience Centre, will receive €11.8 million for the further construction and expansion of the KM3NeT neutrino detector on the seabed of the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition, the FASTTRACK initiative involving Nikhef and six Dutch universities (UU, RUG, UvA, VU, RU, UM) will receive €21.7 million to develop a new generation of ultra-fast particle detectors, intended for experiments at CERN. These are needed to utilise even more intense beams in the LHC accelerator.
Over the next ten years, the institutions involved in the two consortia will collectively invest more than €38 million of their own funds in the running costs of the various facilities.
