Steering Committee Meeting at PSI, Switzerland

The Paul Scherrer Institut (Villigen - PSI) hosted on 20 and 21 November 2019 the meeting of the Steering Committee (SC) of FELs of Europe (FoE). Representatives of 9 FoE partners attended the SC meeting, which was organised after the 2019 LEAPS Plenary Meeting, event hosted by PSI as well.

After the approval of some changes in the organisation 2020-2022 and of the provisional budget for 2020, the SC examined the status of the activities of the FoE expert working groups; in this context it was decided to hold the 2nd Forum for Advanced FEL techniques in connection to the Science@FEL conference at DESY in September 2020.
In other fields, like photon pulse length measurement and instrumentation, the decision was to explore similar initiatives connected to the PhotonDiag workshop and to explore possible interactions and synergies with the LEAPS working groups.
The progress in the preparation of the two FoE events in 2020, namely the Science@FEL conference at DESY/XFEL from 14 to 16 September and the PhotonDiag workshop at PSI from 26 to 29 October, was then reported. Preparation activities are progressing smoothly and quite soon there will be official websites available and registration will start.

Considering the success of the information point of FoE at the FEL Conference 2019, there will be dedicated FoE information points also at the two 2020 events. At the meeting the selection of possible candidates as hosts for the 2022 events has started as well.
It was also agreed that FoE will take a stimulating role in organising a meeting between all soft X-rays FELs and infrared FELs to discuss specific topics of common interest, for both the accelerator part and the photon part, as it is happening already for the hard X-rays facilities (the so called “5 ways meeting”). This idea will be further developed in the next months, aiming for a first meeting in Spring 2021.