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Index
Introduction
The Research at Rijnhuizen
Results in 2008
Education, Training, Outreach and Public Information
Output
Appendix
website Rijnhuizen
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1.4 | Major events of 2008
In this section, several major events for Rijnhuizen in 2008 are mentioned, together with other developments that are important for the future of the institute. For scientific highlights in each of the research programmes, the reader is referred to chapter 3.
‘Very good to excellent’
An international panel evaluated the Rijnhuizen institute this year, with this very favorable main conclusion: ‘The institute stands out by excellent research and a very important and challenging scientific programme’. The institute as a whole, as well as the individual departments, scored either ‘very good to excellent’ (4.5) or ‘excellent’ (5) on the standard evaluation protocol.
FUSENET agreement
This year featured the kick-off of a new Rijnhuizen-initiated project called FUSENET, aiming at unifying and streamlining the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral fusion education in Europe. The public information group of FOM-Rijnhuizen was the focal point that organised the project and managed to secure the participation of 36 benificiaries in 18 different countries in this 2 Million Euro, 3 year period, Euratom-funded project.
Centre of Excellence
The Dutch government, via funding agency NWO, has awarded Rijnhuizen a 500 k€ grant for cooperation with four major Russion research labs. Dr. Tony Donné from the Rijnhuizen-institute will lead the new Centre of Excellence for Fusion Physics and Technology, poised to investigate the fundamental physics of fusion plasmas produced in ITER-like installations. Energy transport, plasma instabilities and plasma-surface-interaction are the main areas of research.
FELICE
In 2008, the FELICE beamline of the Infrared user facility FELIX welcomed the first external users. The purpose of FELICE is to provide significantly higher infrared intensities for low-absorption gas-phase experiments. FELIX and FELICE are nowadays routinely operated interleaved with a great flexibility in the output for both beamlines. A first call for proposals for the FELICE beamline with a deadline of December 1st 2008 was announced.
Science
Scientifically, Rijnhuizen has been doing very well in 2008. The institute published 119 papers in international peer reviewed journals. Fifteen of those were published in High Impact journals (impact factor > 4) such as Angewandte Chemie (3), Astronomy & Astrophysics (3), ChemPhysChem (3), International Reviews on Physical Chemistry (1), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (1), Science (1), The Astrophysical Journal (1). These papers reflect some of the many highlights that Rijnhuizen researchers were involved in this year. For the scientific highlights in each of the research programmes, the reader is referred to chapter 3. Due to bunched starting years, only one PhD thesis was completed this year, compared to seven in 2007. A total of 20 PhD students is currently working at Rijnhuizen.
Another highlight consists of the prizes won by our former PhD students. In 2008 Ivo Classen won the EPS plasma physics division best thesis prize and a Fusion Fellowship by EFDA. A similar fellowship was obtained by Maarten de Bock.
Figure 1.2 Schematic of the Free Electron Laser for Intra-Cavity Experiments (FELICE).
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