Accelerators 2022

The DESY management has been working in crisis mode
ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in
March 2020. After the strains of the pandemic, the Russian
war on Ukraine is now calling into question much of what
we have hitherto taken for granted and posing enormous
challenges. Our main concern remains the suffering people
in Ukraine and the families who have fled the war with its
dire human consequences.
This war now also affects research at DESY. Our current
problems include the general uncontrolled price development
on the energy market and in the construction sector,
the enormous inflation trend and the shaky supply chains
worldwide. All of these pose unprecedented challenges for
the research centre that we have not known before on this
scale in Europe and beyond.
In our current deliberations, we assume that we will have
another three very difficult years ahead of us and will
therefore have to implement massive cost-saving measures.
These will include cuts in the operation of our major
research infrastructures, if we do not receive financial relief,
and painful personnel decisions. The DESY Directorate sees
a particularly sensitive area here in the next generation
of scientists and engineers, whom we must not abandon
under any circumstances. However, we do not give up
hope that the German government will also focus more
strongly on saving the nation’s future innovation
potential.
The current signals from politics to set up a rescue package
also for science make us cautiously optimistic.
In a high-tech nation like Germany, research and innovation
are the decisive – if not the only – levers to lead us out of
the crisis and secure our long-term sovereignty in key
technologies. Against the background of the most acute
problems in energy supply, we must not forget that the
main threat to our survival on this planet is man-made climate
change, which we have to counter with new energy
concepts. Nor must we lose sight of the constant threat of
viral or bacterial pandemics. At DESY, we are all working at
full speed to play our part in solving these complex challenges.
This is also reflected in our strategy loop, which we
are currently working on intensively – in addition to daily
crisis management.
We have identified three pillars for the future development
of DESY:
• The cross-divisional DESY Transformation Project (DTP),
which is to prepare the future strategy of our “solution
ecosystem” and which requires profound conceptual
changes in how we organise research and innovation in
the future
• The National Analytics Centre (NAC) with the facilities
PETRA IV, FLASH2020+ and the Plasma Accelerator as
well as an integrated data management structure as the
core research infrastructures of DESY
• Increased focus in particle physics on medium-sized
dark-matter projects on the DESY campus and exploration
of new opportunities in astroparticle physics offered
by the Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) of the
Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) and by
the German Center for Astrophysics (DZA)
Sustainable concepts play a central role in all our planning.
The Directorate has a clear vision for DESY’s path to
energy-saving and climate-friendly operation. In 2022, we
published our first sustainability report, which will appear
at regular intervals in the future.
In September 2022, we presented the PETRA IV project –
the upgrade of our synchrotron radiation source PETRA III
to a 3D X-ray microscope – to a broader public at a major
event with representatives from science, politics and
industry. I was very pleased that the project was also
supported by Stefan Hell from the Max Planck Institutes
in Göttingen and Heidelberg, a Nobel Laureate and one of
the world’s most renowned representatives of new microscopy
concepts. On the evening of the event, he gave an
impressive
lecture in Hamburg’s City Hall, demonstrating
the innovative power that new types of high-performance
microscopes can unleash.
Under the leadership of Harald Reichert and Riccardo Bartolini,
the preparation of the PETRA IV project continues to
make great progress. The technical design is essentially
complete, and the team is currently working on the application
for inclusion of the project in the German national
roadmap for research infrastructures. PETRA IV will be a
key building block in the transformation process of DESY
that we have been designing over the past few months.
The major impact of the facility will not only be due to its
technical design as an interdisciplinary “discovery and
solution engine” that includes AI-assisted operations, a
new access model and comprehensive involvement of the
broad user community. Although these will increase the
construction and operational costs of the facility, the
expected socio-economic impact will outweigh this investment
many times over. In view of the competing Chinese
High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) project in Beijing, for
instance, which is already at an advanced stage, we must
not lose any valuable time now in implementing the
PETRA IV project.
We have noted with great pleasure the positive decision of
the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF) to realise the German Center for Astrophysics
(DZA), which was prominently promoted by the European
Space Agency (ESA) and DESY. On the DESY side, Christian
Stegmann, Director in charge of Astroparticle Physics, and
Arik Willner, Delegate of the Directorate for Innovation,
were instrumental in the application. This development is a
new piece of the puzzle in our 2022/2023 strategy loop,
which fits perfectly into DESY’s aspiration to build an international
beacon in astroparticle physics at its Zeuthen site.
We live in difficult times and so does our research centre.
My special thanks therefore go to the DESY staff and all
our national and international users and partners for their
reliable support at all times. I hope this annual report will
show you that, despite the current challenges that occupy
us on a daily basis, we are keeping DESY on course for a
bright future development!