Meeting
The 16th ESUO General Asembly – a hybrid in person and online meeting – occurred on October 18th and 19th of 2021, with the host facilities being DESY and EU-XFEL. Elections of the new ESUO President and Executive Board took place during the meeting, ESUO has now become an international non-profit organisation (AISBL) under Belgian law.
Summary
The Chair of ESUO, Ullrich Pietsch, welcomed all the participants and introduced the host represented by Matthias Kreuzeder of the DESY facility.
The Chairs report then focused on i) the transition of ESUO to become an international non-profit organisation, or AISBL under Belgian law, ii) the requirements for the 16th ESUO GA and the actions to be taken and iii) the challenge facing ESUO.
A summary of the CALIPSOplus final meeting was presented from a users perspective by Cormac McGuinness with a focus on TNA and the new research infrastructure funding landscape of the Horizon Europe Work Programmes.
The new constitution, statutes and establishment of ESUO as an AISBL under Belgian law was decribed by Carla Bittencourt and Carlo Mariani. The Royal charter under Belgian law was signed as of September 16th 2021.
The agreed upon medium-term activities from the 15th GA and the outline future strategies for ESUO were presented by Cormac McGuinness and Derek Logan.
The necessity for a clear mandate for National User Delegates was reiterated by the ESUO Chair Ullrich Pietch and the manner and timeframe in which this could be achieved was discussed.
On the second day the host facility was the EU XFEL and an introductory talk by Thomas Tschentscher began the day.
Caterina Biscari, the chair of LEAPS, presented new from LEAPS and the details of the LEAPS-ESUO strategic partnership. ESUO members are participating in various LEAPS workgroups.
A preliminary report on the ESUO questionnaire on the impact of absence of TNA was presented by Ullrich Pietsch and Annick Froideval. The timeframe of the questionnaire was extended with an imperative that more and younger junior researchers are asked to answer the questionnaire, with greater dissemination of the ESUO questionnaire.
The final presentation was on ESUO Disssemination, website and social media presented by Annick Froideval, from work by Rozenn le Hir and Benedetta Casu. This illustrated increased routes for more visibility and several actions were decided upon.
Elections
As required under the new statutes of the ESUO, elections were held for the position of the President of the ESUO, followed by the election of the Executive Board. The results of the election were that Cormac McGuinness (IE) was elected as President of ESUO.
The elected members of the Executive Board were: Carla Bittencourt (BE), Federico Boscherini (IT), Tom Hase (UK), Rainer Lechner (AT), Derek Logan (SE), Bridget Murphy (DE) and Moniek Tromp (NL).
These fulfilled the requirements of diversity under Title 7 of the ESUO statutes.
End of meeting
The meeting ended with a vote of thanks in the room for the outgoing chair Ullrich Pietsch and those Executive Board member who were standing down. The meeting then concluded on-site with some photos and coffee as well as a tour of the EU-XFEL.
