In October, the European Cluster of Advanced Laser Light Sources (EUCALL) project officially started and EUCALL’s Kick-Off meeting took place during 29-30 October in the CFEL building at DESY.

The purpose of the EUCALL is to generate collaboration and synergy between large scale sources of laser-driven and accelerator-driven X-ray radiation. The lead project partner is XFEL.EU, while the other partners are DESY, the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) in Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania; ESRF in Grenoble, Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Lund University, the Paul Scherer Institute and Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. The networks Laserlab-Europe and FELs of Europe are also involved, while representatives from the user communities of FELs and Optical Lasers are members of EUCALL’s steering committee. EUCALL is the first serious effort to bring together the two scientific communities who have been using X-ray light in parallel to each other, and from different scientific and technological backgrounds.

EUCALL is directed by Thomas Tschentscher, and as the lead partner, XFEL.EU has 14 employees involved in the project, with one employee as either Work Package Leader or Co-Leader in each of the seven Work Packages (WPs). There are WPs for EUCALL’s management, dissemination strategies and for development of Synergy of Advanced Light Sources, as well as four technical WPs. These are devoted to the development of new software for simulation and processing of advanced radiation experiments, as well as for new hardware for standardised sample delivery and beam diagnostics for ultra-fast laser experiments. The project has received funding of 7M€ from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and runs until September 2018.

At the Kick-Off meeting, 64 participants from nine countries gathered in Hamburg for introductory presentations from the coordinator team and for parallel separate WP sessions. Within the WP sessions, the WP leaders recognized that experts from a wide range of relevant fields were present in each group, and that experience exchange workshops between the different facilities require to be organised in the coming months. The next individual WP meetings and tele-conferences have already scheduled to prepare for the first EUCALL milestones and deliverables due in early 2016.