The ABINIT Users Mailing List ( CLOSED )

[Gian-Marco Rignanese <rignanese@pcpm.ucl.ac.be>]

The European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility (ETSF) is an exciting  
and innovative new initiative in European nanoscience, a permanent  
research infrastructure bringing wider and easier access for the  
public and private sectors to world-leading theoretical Physics  
research tools and expertise, and continuing an highly successful 15- 
year collaboration between Condensed Matter Theory (CMT)
research groups in Europe. The ETSF is now publishing its first Call  
for Proposals, opening on Monday, 12th March 2007 and closing at  
23:59 on Wednesday, 11th April 2007, on its web site at http:// 
www.etsf.eu. This site also provides comprehensive information about  
the Facility, including details of the scientific fields at the core  
of its expertise.

Proposals are welcomed from any person or group from the public or  
private sector who has a need to engage with this field in  
collaboration with the ETSF's expert researchers: just as expert  
scientists' services are necessary to use a synchrotron, ETSF  
services are essential successfully to use the specialised software  
needed for theoretical spectroscopy.

In pursuit of its major objective to widen access to knowledge and  
expertise in the field of electronic excitations, the ETSF is  
building a strong community of Users, beginning with these first  
projects. Users may come from all over the world, and include  
theorists who need spectroscopic methods complementary to their own  
work, experimental researchers needing to simulate and
analyse experimentally-derived spectra, graduate and post- graduate  
students or companies' staff requiring training in the field of nano- 
spectroscopy, or companies with a need for the specialised resources  
that ETSF can provide to help to develop new products. They may work  
in fields such as atomic and molecular Physics, Materials Science,  
Chemistry, Biology including Biophysics and Biochemistry; or in the  
industrial sector's laboratories researching electronics, optical  
components, nanosynthesis or characterisation. The ETSF enables their  
connection with the most appropriate theory group to address their  
needs, offering a wide variety of ways of sharing knowledge,  
depending on the expertise and needs of the User: for example,  
support for use of specialised software, placement of a member of the  
User's organisation for training, undertaking of a fully- 
collaborative project or a service provision in which the User is the  
"customer". Following this Call for Proposals, a small number of  
scientific projects will be selected in April 2007, with details on  
the selected projects then being discussed with ETSF members and work  
starting in the second half of 2007.

The ETSF contribution to the projects resulting from this first Call  
will be funded entirely by the EU Nanoquanta Network of Excellence  
grant, free of charge to the User. Projects for this first call  
should hence be feasible within one year, but, if a user can provide  
partial support, either financial or other resources, a project may  
be more substantial. Selection will be based on scientific interest  
and feasibility and on the level of Nanoquanta resources required.