Research professor Juan José Hernández-Rey, member of the VEGA group (Valencia Experimental Group of Astroparticles) at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC), located in the scientific-academic area of the University of Valencia Science Park (PCUV) and mix center of Joint Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the University of Valencia (UV), has contributed as an international advisor in the selection process of the Major Research Infrastructures (GII) in which Germany will participate as a matter of priority over the next few years. Hernández-Rey was invited by the German Council for Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) to be part of the expert group in astronomy and astrophysics which evaluated projects in this area.
The German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR, formerly BMBF) initiated a process in 2024 to prioritise future GIEs in which Germany will participate. The BMFTR announced on July 15, 2024 the start of the process, date on which the call for applications was opened, with a closing date of October 25 of that year.
A total of 32 projects entered the evaluation phase, supported by a total of 56 German institutions, of which 19 were higher education and 37 non-university. The total amount requested was €8.5 billion.
"The preparation of a shortlist in our working group from a scientific and technical point of view has required a detailed discussion of the qualities of each project in four previously established dimensions: scientific potential, scientific exploitation, relevance for Germany as a scientific centre and scientific and technical feasibility", Juan José Hernández-Rey, IFIC researcher
One requirement for projects to be included in the prioritisation process was that installation costs (excluding operating costs) should amount to at least €50 million per infrastructure. For humanities and social science research infrastructures the threshold was set at EUR 20 million. In addition, projects were required to be real qualitative leaps in research, not improvements of existing infrastructures. It was also requested that the previous studies had a sufficient degree of maturity so that the proposed infrastructure could be implemented in the next four years.
"The preparation of a shortlist in our working group from a scientific and technical point of view has required a detailed discussion of the qualities of each project in four previously established dimensions: scientific potential, scientific exploitation, Relevance for Germany as a science centre and scientific and technical feasibility. It has certainly not been an easy process, due to the very high quality of the proposals received", says Prof. Hernández-Rey.
The projects submitted underwent a review process consisting of three parallel lines of evaluation carried out by three separate committees: a scientific evaluation led by the German Council for Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), which focused on the four dimensions mentioned above, a cost-risk assessment that considered the soundness of expenditure plans and funding concepts throughout the GII life cycle, and a study of the innovation potential and transfer of applications. An integrated transfer idea was used to assess the potential impact of the projects beyond their scientific potential for Germany as a member country of the European Union. This transfer idea covered not only the social impact and contributions to future planning and transformation, but also the expected contributions of the projects to technological independence in Germany and Europe.
Do not miss this video of Juan José Hernández-Rey in the PCUV
The BMFTR will shortly announce the next stages of the process and their concrete implications for the development of German GII. Although inclusion in the list does not imply a funding commitment, it indicates the priority given to these projects from a research policy perspective and their contribution to the functioning of the German scientific system.
Prof. Juan José Hernández-Rey is also a member of the Scientific Council of CNRS, the National Centre for Scientific Research in France, and is part of the LHC Experiments Committee at CERN, in which he is Lead Referee for the ATLAS experiment and a member of the Scientific Council of HERMES, one of the interdisciplinary projects of the InIdEx (Initiatives of Excellence) programme at Paris Cité University, involving the Parisian institutes IPGP, APC and AIM.
"It has been a very thorough and systematic evaluation process, which will mark Germany’s priorities for major research infrastructures in the coming years," concludes Hernández-Rey.
Source: IFIC