IPAC23 The 14th International Particle Accelerator Conference May 2023

With over 1600 participants, the 14th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC’23)at the Lido in Venice, was a well-attended event. First and foremost, IPAC is a scientific conference concerning all the technologies required to build and maintain particle accelerators i.e. cryogenics, vacuum, magnets, etc. Obviously, the industry plays a vital part in providing the equipment in these domains. The interest of industry was confirmed by a sold-out industrial fair. The Dutch network of Industrial Liaison Officers (ILO’s) BigScience.NL had obtained a booth to represent Dutch industry and three Dutch companies joined the booth to showcase their capabilities: VDL-ETG, Cryoworld and Mat-tech.

Given that the event was organised across several buildings, it was essential to also move about to get in touch with the companies located in the other areas. Still, the Dutch companies managed to get in touch with many parties and our booth drew enough attention. The flyer with a QR-code to the online brochure in which all the companies in the BigScience.NL network are presented was taken and distributed in numbers. The small Delft blue porcelain clogs, also managed to draw attention to our booth, creating the opportunity to present the Dutch industry.

On the Tuesday there was an industrial session in which a number of successful collaborations between science and industry were presented. Still, it remained clear that it takes effort to get these collaborations started and running well. The Big Science Business Forum, scheduled for early October 2024 in Trieste, with a strong focus on this particular topic, will provide another opportunity to create new partnerships. BigScience.NL is committed to have a large booth in Trieste to support Dutch companies in their efforts in the broader domain of Big Science.

For the ILO’s, the IPAC’23 provided a good opportunity to talk to fellow ILO’s about future grant proposals to continue the efforts started with ENRITTC and continued within the PERIIA board in which Jan Visser has a seat. Also connections were made with various Big Science Research Infrastructures such as the FAIR project at GSI and the ELI (Extreme Light Infrastructure) ERIC.