ISTAC’s evaluation of CERIC’s Austrian and Italian Partner Facilities
On May 28th and 29th, 2025, the members of the CERIC International Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (ISTAC) performed the periodical evaluation of the Austrian and Italian partner facilities (PFs) of the Consortium.
The evaluation is part of CERIC’s commitment to monitoring and enhancing the quality of its infrastructure to ensure compliance with the highest standards and further improvement.
The purpose was thus to evaluate the performance of the PF in terms of the quality of its scientific activities and its contribution to the common strategic objectives and access capabilities of CERIC, as well as the added value of the PF inclusion in the Consortium, for both the PFs and CERIC.
The evaluation was conducted by an international Committee of Evaluators (CoE).
In the case of Austria, the CoE was composed of Luis Fonseca (ISTAC Chair, and Chair of the CoE), Nathan Cowieson (External Evaluator from Diamond Light Source) and Ann Terry (External Evaluator from MAXIV). Expert evaluators visited the SAXS and Deep X-ray Lithography beamlines of the Technical University Graz at the Elettra synchrotron in Trieste and gave a presentation of their main findings to the Director of the Austrian PF, Heinz Amenitsch.
At the Italian PF at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, the CoE – composed of Karstern Horn (ISTAC Member and Chair of the CoE), Annalisa Pastore (ISTAC Member) and Adrian Mancuso (External Evaluator from Diamond Light Source) – visited a number of synchrotron beamlines, such as XRD1, SISSI, XAFS, as well as the Tomolab, the IUVSOFF instrument and the free electron laser beamline TeraFERMI.
They had the chance to have a tour of the construction site Elettra 2.0 and to listen to the presentation by Luca Gregoratti on the advances in synchrotron radiation research made possible by the future setup.
More presentations on the latest and upcoming IT developments, and of the work carried out by the PF in the domain of the life sciences took place, to end with a final presentation on the main findings by the CoE to the director of the CERIC Italian PF, Marco Marazzi.
The evaluation report that the two Committees of Evaluators will produce following their site visits at the Austrian and Italian facilities, will serve to provide guidance to further improve the quality of the CERIC portfolio and the efficiency of the services offered to the scientific community worldwide.