December 2023 ESRFnews
10
INSIGHT
How can a new hub be proposed?
Hub proposals should develop
naturally through exchanges between
the user community and the ESRF
management and relevant beamline
scientists. Where it seems that there
is an opportunity for accelerated
research and development in a field of
high societal relevance, the hub can be
proposed by an annual deadline,
on 15 January. Following peer
review, it will be subject to a final
recommendation by the ESRF
scientific advisory committee (SAC).
Who can propose one?
Although hubs must comprise at least
three independent research groups,
a single spokesperson affiliated to
a scientific institution of an ESRF
Member or Associate country must
act as the overall PI to propose the
hub to consolidate the biannual
beamline and beamtime requests and
the associated A forms to file
an annual report and to be a single
point contact for the ESRF
More details on hubs can be found at
esrffrHUB
Jon Cartwright
conditions, which are best addressed
by different synchrotron techniques.
According to its website, “the scope
of the Battery Hub is to guarantee
continuity, flexibility, reactivity,
repeatability and efficiency.”
Of course, not all fields demand
lots of techniques: the HOAHub,
for instance, is exclusively focused on
newly developed hierarchical phase-
contract tomography (HiP-CT)
at the flagship BM18 beamline. By
opening up developments made by its
scientists within the hub, however,
it aims to foster a “synergistic
and interdisciplinary” method of
working that will result in a HiP-CT
“pipeline” – one that will speed
scientists on the way to answering
some of the most important global
biomedical questions
Doesnt sharing data and knowledge
go against the competitive spirit
It may not be the best option for all
fields But in some cases encouraging
the best minds to put their heads
together to push for significant even
groundbreaking progress in their field
can be of great benefit for our society
in general and this is something the
ESRF wants to encourage
Above: Marta Mirolo of the Battery Hub studies composite battery anodes (see News, p8).
What is a hub?
A hub is a new mode of community
access for the ESRF that is
designed to accelerate scientific
progress in fields that are widely
recognised to have urgently needed
applications in society. It requires
a number of independent principal
investigators (PIs) working in such
a field to collaborate – by internally
coordinating beamtime distribution,
and sharing knowledge, technology,
beamline data and results prior to
publication – in the hope of producing
more impactful science, faster.
Has anyone tried this?
Along with the new BAG access modes
(see ESRFnews June 2023, p7), the hub
has been piloted since 2021 by PIs at
the French Alternative Energies and
Atomic Energy Commission (CEA),
the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL)
and the ESRF, in the field of battery
technology. It has been followed in
September this year by the launch
of the Human Organ Atlas Hub
(HOAHub), in which PIs from eight
different institutes, co-funded by
the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, are
aiming to 3D-image entire organs – at
resolutions of less than a micron.
Why is a hub a good idea?
Some fields of challenge-driven
research are suited to extensive
collaboration, and in these fields it can
be inefficient to rely on the acceptance
of many individual standard proposals
by different and independent proposal
review panels. With a guaranteed
allocation of beamtime for a three
year period a hub can distribute
its own beamtime among partners
and can pursue more ambitious
goals involving input from up to six
different beamlines safe from the
possibility that one of the beamtimes
will not be granted undermining
the whole project This is very much
a benefit for the Battery Hub the
performance of batteries is dependent
on a mélange of effects that take place
over a range of spatial and time scales
not to mention different operating
One of the new modes of ESRF community access is the “hub”, designed to accelerate
progress in f ields of high societal importance.
Hubs of activity
E S R F/ S T E F C A N D É