CREMLINplus kick-off Workshop

The CREMLINplus kick-off workshop was conducted on the 19-20 February 2020 at DESY in Hamburg. The workshop was attended by almost 100 European and Russian participants from Russia, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria. All 35 CREMLINplus project partners were represented at the kick-off workshop.

The aim of the kick-off workshop was to present and explain the overall work plan and structure of the project as well as to clarify roles and align expectations. In a welcome speech, DESY’s Director of Administration, Christian Harringa, highlighted the importance of the project and pointed to its role in science diplomacy. In a series of introductory statements both the European Commission´s and the Russian perspectives on the project were presented. Further, the governance structure of the project, the internal and external communication structure as well as financial regulations and reporting under Horizon 2020 were explained.
The EU-Russian megascience scientific-technical collaboration plans including status reports on 5 Russian megascience projects as well as the EU-Russian non- technical collaboration plans around LIST-11 facilities and megascience projects were presented. The non-technical collaboration in the project comprises a variety of coordination and support activities, carried out within WP8 “Access to Russian RI”, WP9 “Staff exchange and training for RI management”, WP10 “Joint long-term sustainability of RI”.
There were parallel working sessions for work packages 2-10 to discuss current issues such as WP kick-offs, work plans, tasks, roles, timelines etc. followed by a plenary session dedicated to highlighting the interaction within CREMLINplus among technical and non-technical work packages. For each technical WP – these are WP2 NICA, WP3 PIK, WP4 USSR, WP5 SCT, WP6 XCELS, WP7 DETEC – one delegate was nominated to take care of the interface to the non-technical activities in the project.

The kick-off workshop participants were all asked to vote on a project logo. Coffee breaks provided networking opportunities for the participants and during the workshop dinner, participants were invited to muse on their vision for CREMLINplus and to share it with their dinner partners.
Materials from the kick-off workshop, including the agenda as well as available slides from the talks, can be found on Indico.