At the left, detail of the previous meeting in which Caterina Biscari presented the achievements and the current status of ALBA. At the right, Caterina Biscari and Ada Colau above one of the ALBA beamlines.
At the left, Ada Colau, Caterina Biscari and Marta Cruells at the CIRCE beamlines talking to Michael Foerster, scientist of the beamline. At the right, Caterina Biscari, Joan Subirats and Marta Cruells at the CLÆSS beamline talking to Laura Simonelli, head of the beamline, and the rest of her team.
Cerdanyola del Vallès, 12th December 2019. Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona, accompanied by Joan Subirats, councilor and director of the area of Culture, Education, Science and Community and Marta Cruells, head of the Feminisms and LGTBI Department Cabinet, visited the ALBA Synchrotron yesterday.
The visit started with a meeting with the ALBA management team in which the director gave a brief presentation on the operation and status of the complex accelerator. She showed the various areas of application of the science done at ALBA, such as drug development, material science, nanotechnology, environment, food industry or cultural heritage, and talked about the plans for the future of the facility that currently has four beamlines under construction and expects to approve funding for at least another three more.
Caterina Biscari wanted to highlight also the relevance to have this scientific facility in the area “It is very important that the institutions and companies understand how we can help them to develop their research”, and what ALBA represents for Catalonia and Spain, encouraging to increase the funding so the infrastructure can continue to grow.
After the meeting, they were able to walk through the experimental hall and visit several beamlines where the users explained the experiments they were doing.
“The ALBA Synchrotron is one of the most outstanding scientific projects of our country, its research makes it possible to improve medicine, food or the fight against the climate crisis. We want Barcelona to keep being a referent in science and innovation, and the Synchrotron has a key role in it.” said Ada Colau after the visit.
