Skip to main content
  • DE
  • EN
  • FR
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)
Suche
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)

Hauptnavigation

  • Labs & User ServicesOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Research at PSI
    • Research Divisions and Labs
    • Facilities and Instruments
    • Research Initiatives
    • PSI User Labs
    • Scientific Highlights
    • Scientific Events
    • Scientific Career
    • Useroffice
  • VisitorsOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Contact
    • How to find us
    • Public Events
    • Visitor Centre psi forum
    • Schülerlabor iLab
    • Center for Proton Therapy
  • IndustryOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Technology Transfer
    • Spin-off Companies
    • PARK innovAARE
  • Our ResearchOpen mainmenu item
    • Current topics from our research
    • Matter and Material
    • Human Health
    • Energy and Environment
    • Large Research Facilities
    • Brochures
    • Films
    • Media Corner
  • Career & Further EducationOpen mainmenu item
    • Job Opportunities
    • Personnel Policy
    • Working at PSI
    • Equal Opportunities, Diversity & Inclusion
    • Training and Further Education
    • Vocational Training
    • PSI Education Centre
    • Support Program "PSI Career Return Program"
    • PSI-FELLOW/COFUND
  • About PSIOpen mainmenu item
    • PSI in brief
    • Strategy
    • Guiding principles
    • Facts and figures
    • Organisational structure
    • Suppliers and customers
    • Customers E-Billing
    • IT and Computing
    • Safety at PSI (in German)

You are here:

  1. PSI Home
  2. Our Research
  3. Current topics from our research
  4. PSI equips the Swiss Light Source SLS for the future

Secondary navigation

Our Research

  • Current topics from our research Expanded submenu item
    • Matter and Material
    • Human Health
    • Energy and Environment
    • ESI Platform
    • Large research facilities
    • Project SLS 2.0
    • Topic Overview
    • Chronological Overview
      • Archiv
  • 5232 – The magazine of the Paul Scherrer Institute
    • Contact
  • Brochures
  • Films
    • Virtual Tour
  • Media corner
    • Media Releases
    • Social Media Newsroom
21 December 2020

PSI equips the Swiss Light Source SLS for the future

Media Releases Research Using Synchrotron Light Large Research Facilities SLS 2.0

Green light for SLS 2.0: The upgrade of the Swiss Light Source SLS at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI plannned for the coming years can now proceed. Within the framework of the ERI Dispatch for 2021-2024, the funding for this renovation has been assured.

PSI Director Christian Rüegg at the Swiss Light Source SLS, which now is getting an upgrade for the research of the future.
PSI Director Christian Rüegg at the Swiss Light Source SLS, which now is getting an upgrade for the research of the future.
(Photo: Paul Scherrer Institute/Markus Fischer)

The Swiss Dispatch on Promotion of Education, Research and Innovation (ERI) for 2021 to 2024 has now been agreed upon in the Swiss Parliament. It contains, among other things, the budget that the ETH Domain is to receive for the coming years. This includes the budget of 99 million Swiss francs that will be required for the planned renovation of the Swiss Light Source SLS. With that, the upgrade project, known as SLS 2.0, has been given the green light.

"We are very pleased about this funding commitment. This decision showed that the pandemic would not be able to damage the long-term vision for Switzerland as a research location," says PSI Director Christian Rüegg. "Even and especially in these times, we urgently need cutting-edge research."

Coronavirus research at SLS

From the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, PSI undertook special efforts to advance research on the novel coronavirus. The Swiss Light Source SLS is playing an important role in this work, for example through the elucidation of protein structures that are part of the virus, and in the examination of lung tissue to gain better understanding of the coronavirus and its effects.

An investment in the future

As valuable as the current research at SLS is at this time, research is constantly evolving, and research facilities have to keep up. "In the foreseeable future, many scientific questions will arise that we would not be able to answer with today's SLS, or that would require a very long time to solve," says SLS 2.0 Project Leader Hans Braun. "We are very glad now that the upgrade will come." After the upgrade, SLS will provide a significantly more intense X-ray beam with which, in coming decades as in the past, it will still be possible to do research on the day's most pressing and emerging topics. "We will be getting significantly more data in the same amount of time. Or to put it the other way around: Extensive experiments that have, up to now, fallen through because they would have lasted weeks or months will then become feasible. For experiments that previously would have required 24 hours of continuous measurement, we will only need a little more than half an hour after the renovation."

Text: Paul Scherrer Institute/Laura Hennemann


About PSI

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI develops, builds and operates large, complex research facilities and makes them available to the national and international research community. The institute's own key research priorities are in the fields of matter and materials, energy and environment and human health. PSI is committed to the training of future generations. Therefore about one quarter of our staff are post-docs, post-graduates or apprentices. Altogether PSI employs 2100 people, thus being the largest research institute in Switzerland. The annual budget amounts to approximately CHF 400 million. PSI is part of the ETH Domain, with the other members being the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne, as well as Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) and WSL (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research). (Last updated in May 2020)

Further information

SLS 2.0 - The upgrade of the Swiss Light Source SLS

Contact

Dr. Hans-Heinrich Braun
Project Leader, SLS 2.0
Paul Scherrer Institute, Forschungsstrasse 111, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 56 310 32 41, e-mail: hans.braun@psi.ch [German, English, French]

Copyright

PSI provides image and/or video material free of charge for media coverage of the content of the above text. Use of this material for other purposes is not permitted. This also  includes the transfer of the image and video material into databases as well as sale by third parties.

Sidebar

5232 Ausgabe 3 2020

5232 — Das Magazin des Paul Scherrer Instituts

03/2020
in German
View in issuu.com
Download

Visitor Centre psi forum

Experience research live


The iLab School Laboratory

Experience Science - Explore Research

top

Footer

Paul Scherrer Institut

Forschungsstrasse 111
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
How to find us

Imprint
Terms and Conditions

Login

Telephone: +41 56 310 21 11
Telefax: +41 56 310 21 99
Contact form

Visitor Centre psi forum
School Lab iLab (in German)
Center for Proton Therapy

Follow us: Twitter (in English) LinkedIn Youtube Issuu RSS

Quicklinks

  • Phone Book/People Search
  • Digital User Office
  • Technology transfer
  • PSI Publications
  • Computing
  • Safety (in German)
  • Job Opportunities
  • Vocational Training (in German)
  • Suppliers
  • Customers E-Billing
  • PSI Guest House
  • PSI Gastronomie (in German)

For the media

  • Media Contact
  • Media Releases
  • Social Media Newsroom
  • Facts and Figures
  • PSI in brief
  • Films
  • DE
  • EN
  • FR