22. May 2012 Helmholtz Head Office

Platform for Detector Technology and Systems

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The Helmholtz Association is setting up a platform to drive the development of detector technologies and detector systems. The platform will pool the expertise of researchers from seven Helmholtz Centres and two Helmholtz Institutes and from the eleven universities and seven research institutions in Germany and other countries that have joined the project so far. The platform will be funded as a portfolio theme from 2012 to 2016 and receive a total of €13 million. It aims to develop technologies for building highly-integrated detectors of photons, neutrons and charged particles, to optimise data transmission and analysis, and to design and build detector prototypes.

“Highly sensitive detectors are not only crucial for basic research, but are also increasingly required in applied research, for example in medical research and in the development of new materials,” says Helmholtz Association President Prof. Jürgen Mlynek. In order to systematically promote cooperation between research institutions and universities and drive progress in this area, the Helmholtz Association is providing a total of €13 million in funding between 2012 and 2016 for the development of a platform for detector technologies and detector systems. After 2016, research will continue within the framework of the Helmholtz Association’s Research Programmes. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology will serve as the coordinating institution for the initiative. The KIT is one of seven Helmholtz Centres participating in the project, along with the Helmholtz Institutes in Jena und Mainz and seven research institutions and eleven universities in Germany and other countries.

The detectors of tomorrow will be vastly more sensitive and capable of delivering several orders of magnitude more data than those of today. The detectors required for some tasks are as big as apartment buildings, for example the one used for research in elementary particle physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Others, in turn, are small enough to be used by doctors for non-invasive endoscopic examinations.

The new platform will give researchers from the participating institutions access to cutting-edge technology in the field and the latest detectors, and will raise the international profile of German research and engineering in this area. It will also make it easier for universities to participate in Helmholtz Association research projects and to benefit from the infrastructure of the Helmholtz Centres. A further key objective of the initiative is to provide education and training for young researchers and technicians in the specialised area of detector instrumentation.

Participating Helmholtz Centres and Institutes:

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)
Researchszentrum Jülich (FZJ)
GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI)
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB)
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)
Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Centre for Materials and Coastal Research (HZG)
Helmholtz Institute Jena (HIJ)
Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM)

Spokesperson:

Prof. Dr Marc Weber (KIT)

Associated Research Institutes:

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Illinois, USA)
National institute of nuclear and particle physics (IN2P3) (Lyon, France)
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (Strasbourg, France)
Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire (Orsay, France)
Max Planck Institute for Physics (Munich, Germany)
Paul Scherrer Institute (Villigen, Switzerland)
Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC Technology, RAL, Harwell Oxford (UK)

University research groups participating at the time of application:

AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland
University of Freiburg, Germany
RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Dresden, Germany
University of Augsburg, Germany
University of Bonn, Germany
National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) Florence, Italy
Universität Hamburg, Germany
Heidelberg University, Germany
University of Wuppertal, Germany

Background information: The Helmholtz Association’s portfolio process

Within its Pact for Research and Innovation, the German federal government granted research organisations an annual budgetary increase to address topics of relevance for the future, to promote young researchers and to advance scientific research in Germany. The Helmholtz Association is using part of this budgetary increase to fund a number of portfolio themes identified as of particular significance for the future by experts from all Helmholtz Centres in an in-depth evaluation process. The Association’s university research partners also benefit from this funding. From the next funding period, the portfolio themes will be continued as part of the Helmholtz Association’s Research Programmes.

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