Research professor Juan José Hernández-Rey, member of the VEGA (Valencia Experimental Group of Astroparticles) at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Valencia (UV), has contributed as an international advisor in the selection process for the Large Research Infrastructures (GII) in which Germany will participate on a priority basis in the coming years. Hernández-Rey was invited by the German Council for Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) to join the group of experts in astronomy and astrophysics that evaluated projects in this area.

In 2024, the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR, formerly BMBF) initiated a process to prioritise the future GIIs in which Germany will participate. The BMFTR announced the start of the process on 15 July 2024, when the call for applications was opened, with a closing date of 25 October of that year.

A total of 32 projects entered the evaluation phase, supported by a total of 56 German institutions, of which 19 were higher education institutions and 37 were non-university institutions. The total amount requested amounted to €8.5 billion.

One requirement for projects to be included in the prioritisation process was that installation costs (excluding operating costs) had to amount to at least €50 million per infrastructure. For research infrastructures in the humanities and social sciences, the threshold was set at €20 million. In addition, projects were required to represent genuine qualitative leaps in research, rather than improvements to existing infrastructure. It was also required that preliminary studies be sufficiently mature for the proposed infrastructure to be implemented within the next four years.

‘The preparation of a shortlist by our working group from a scientific and technical point of view required a detailed discussion of the qualities of each project in four pre-established dimensions: scientific potential, scientific use, relevance for Germany as a scientific centre, and scientific and technical feasibility. It was certainly not an easy process, given the extremely high quality of the proposals received,’ says Prof. Hernández-Rey.

The projects submitted underwent a review process consisting of three parallel evaluation streams carried out by three different committees: a scientific evaluation led by the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), which focused on the four dimensions mentioned above; a cost and risk assessment that considered the soundness of the spending plans and concepts to be funded throughout the entire GII life cycle; and a study of the innovation and transfer potential of the applications. A comprehensive transfer concept was used to assess the potential impact of the projects beyond their scientific potential for Germany as a member of the European Union. This transfer concept covered not only the social impact and contributions to future planning and transformation, but also the expected contributions of the projects to the technological independence of Germany and Europe.

With the information provided by the working groups of the three evaluation pillars, the BMFTR's Research Infrastructure Committee (Ausschuss Forschungsinfrastrukturen) selected a total of nine priority projects, which were announced by Research Minister Dorothee Bär on 8 July: CREATION, DALI, Preliminary Phase for the Einstein Telescope (ET), HBS-I, LEGEND-1000, PETRA IV, RIDLOP, SLICES-DE, and IceCube-Gen2.

Next steps

The BMFTR will shortly announce the next stages of the process and their specific implications for the development of German GIIs. Although inclusion on the list does not imply a commitment to funding, it does indicate the priority given to these projects from the perspective of research policy and their contribution to the functioning of the German scientific system.

Prof. Juan José Hernández-Rey is also a member of the Scientific Council of the CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research, sits on the CERN LHC Experiments Committee, where he is Lead Referee for the ATLAS experiment, and is a member of the Scientific Council of HERMES, one of the interdisciplinary projects of the InIdEx (Initiatives of Excellence) programme at Paris Cité University, which involves the Parisian institutes IPGP, APC and AIM.

‘It has been a very thorough and systematic evaluation process, which will set Germany's priorities in terms of large research infrastructures for the coming years,’ concludes Hernández-Rey.

More information:

Link to the Major Research Infrastructure Proposals prioritised by the BMFTR.