EUCALL has established an Exchange Program for staff at EUCALL's free-electron laser, synchrotron and optical laser facilities. Young scientists will be given the opportunity to develop a technical and instrumental background participating as visitors during periods of commissioning, internal, or users beamtime at different facilities.

This initiative would allow to improve the average know-how of young scientists giving them the unique opportunity to maturate personal experience on different energy ranges from optical, to XUV, to hard X-rays, facing different problems related to different classes of experiments (diffraction imaging, scattering, femtochemistry, atomic spectroscopy, etc.). A second important aspect of the establishment of this exchange program is the boosting of cooperation among local scientific staff at different facilities.      

Beneficiaries: scientists of the EUCALL partners. No age or scientific background limitations are applied but, in the evaluation of the candidates, young scientists (PhD students, Postdocs, Scientist in the early stages of their careers, e.g., holding a PhD obtained less than 4 years before) will be given priority.

Locations: the Exchange Program is intended to sponsor exchange activities where a scientist (from a EUCALL partner) spends some time (typically a week) in another facility. The receiving facility belongs to EUCALL. In exceptional cases, selected destinations (like, for instance, American or Japanese facilities) not being partner in EUCALL may be proposed. In these cases, the application requires explicit evaluation by the Exchange Program Evaluation Committee using the criteria age, gender, benefit to applicant and sending EUCALL partner, etc.

Outcome: the scientist who completes the EP will submit a report (within 4 weeks after the completion of the exchange) to the EP Evaluation Committee describing the activities carried out during the exchange period.

Please note that it will be the task of the applicant, his/her institution, and the hosting institution to find an agreement about who, when, where, etc the exchange will involve and take place. EUCALL does not take care of identifying candidates or locations, and rather serves as a sponsor, not an organizer

A full description of the Exchange Program and background information can be found here.

For any questions or for further information please contact the Exchange Program coordinator here.

General rules for reimbursement of costs:

1. One single roundtrip  travel is allowed, from the home to the hosting facility, and back.

2. All tickets (flights, trains, buses, etc.) must be bought in economy class.

3. The use of taxis is not allowed unless approved by EUCALL EP coordinator.

4. Facility guesthouses are preferred for accommodation; if not available, non-luxury hotels should be used (3 stars maximum) with a maximum nightly rate defined by EUCALL on a case-by-case basis.

5. Receipts for accomodation must be addressed to:

                         European XFEL Facility GmbH

                         Finance

                         Holzkoppel 4

                         22869 Schenefeld

                         Germany

6. Participants must book their travel and accommodation costs with personal payment, rather than by charging the costs to their facility. EUCALL cannot reimburse travel costs directly to one of its partner facilities, but only to individuals.

7. All expenses should be documented with receipts.

8. Reimbursement of travel and living expenses will be processed and reimbursed by EUCALL after the end of the exchange period upon the presentation of a "European XFEL - Visitor Allowance" form with the original receipts.

9. All accounts must be settled by 30/09/2018, therefore any exchange program must be concluded in time for this (30/06/2018 at the latest).

Application Form