Last week witnessed the official launch of INTELUM, a major new project aimed at investigating new fibre concepts for hadron and jet calorimeters for high energy physics experiments, in order to improve the energy resolution of the particle detectors by a factor of two or more.

The four year INTELUM project will be undertaken by a strong consortium of 16 research institutes and companies from around the world. The partners are located not only in Europe and ex-Soviet countries, but also in the US and Japan. Over the course of the project, they will be working together on developement of micro-pulling-down crystal growth production technology, which has the potential to enable fast and low-cost production of the new fibres.

The kick-off meeting was held on 11th March 2015 in CERN, the organisation that coordinates the project. During the meeting, the partners presented their organisations, and discussed general questions related to the project organisation and its scientific part. Besides, they also discussed a plan of activities for the first year of the project.

Being funded under the Marie-Curie RISE scheme, INTELUM is focused on scientists exchange. During the project, researchers will be visiting their colleagues in partner organisations in order to share their knowledge and gain experience in a different work environment. This will help the scientists not only to improve their researchers profiles, but also to enhance their networks of international cooperation, which they will continue using upon the project completion.