Hereon is now firmly rooted at DESY

"After more than ten years in a wide variety of buildings on the DESY site, we have now found a permanent home for our GEMS platform here in the CXNS building with state-of-the-art laboratories and excellent facilities. The vagabond life has come to an end," Prof Martin Müller was pleased to say with a wink during his opening speech of the GEMS symposium at DESY. Martin Müller heads the Institute for Materials Physics at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon as well as the German Engineering Materials Science Centre (GEMS). He clarified that GEMS focuses on engineering science issues and is unique worldwide with its complementary use of high-intensity synchrotron and neutron radiation in Hamburg and Garching near Munich.

The subsequent greetings by Hereon Supervisory Board Chairman Ministerialdirigent Engelbert Beyer (Federal Ministry of Education and Research), Andreas Malzahn (representing Dr Oliver Grundei, State Secretary for Science and Culture of the State of Schleswig-Holstein), Prof Wolfgang Wall, Chairman of the Hereon Technical and Scientific Advisory Board (Chair of Computational Mechanics, Technical University of Munich), Prof Helmut Dosch, Chairman of the DESY Board of Directors, and Prof Matthias Rehahn, Hereon Scientific Director, underlined the outstanding relevance of Hereon research at DESY.

With their work, the scientists create ideal conditions for the development of innovative materials and processes that find application in medical technology, lightweight construction and climate protection as well as hydrogen technology, among others. In the new GEMS facilities, the preparation, execution and evaluation of experiments with synchrotron radiation at the GEMS beamlines at PETRA III are now even more closely interlinked. The guests were able to gain an overview of this during an extensive tour of the CXNS building and the GEMS beamlines.

The following expert speakers illustrated the scientific issues and collaborations at GEMS: