Priority access call for work on combating COVID-19

On January 30th, 2020, the WHO declared the recent outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a public health emergency of international concern. It declared that there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the newly identified virus and its possible future evolution as well as to contain the spread; to develop precise diagnostics and treatment, and to improve the public health response and patient care.

The SLS and the SwissFEL provide unique characterisation techniques to efficiently and promptly support these needs. We are opening a "PRIORITY COVID-19 Call” for short proposals and quick peer review to enable rapid access to beamtime. Research proposals shall have the potential to effectively contribute to the understanding of the virus and/or to improve the clinical or public health response and patient care. This "PRIORITY COVID-19 Call” is explicitly for projects requiring a rapid access to beamtime within the next months. For other projects we are referring to our regular calls.

We strongly encourage any group with a need for beamtime to submit brief proposals per email to the PSI User Office (useroffice@psi.ch) using the following template. The “PRIORITY COVID-19 Call” will be continuously open for the next 6 months as from Monday, 9th March 2020 .

The PRIORITY COVID-19 proposal template can be downloaded here.