WG4 Industry & Innovation

WG4 Industry & Innovation strengthens the connection between European industry and the advanced capabilities of the LEAPS community. Bringing together Industrial Contact and Liaison Officers, Business Development Officers, Procurement Officers and technology transfer specialists from Europe’s synchrotron radiation and free-electron laser facilities, WG4 acts as a shared platform for industry engagement across LEAPS.

WG4 recognises that industry engagement is not a single pathway. Our mission is to make it easier for companies, from SMEs to major industrial partners, to access, understand and benefit from Europe’s world-leading accelerator-based photon sources. Companies may come to LEAPS as users seeking analytical insight, as suppliers developing specialised technologies, as collaborators solving shared R&D challenges, or as partners bringing facility-developed innovations to market.

The strength of WG4 lies in connecting these pathways across the LEAPS network. By combining local facility expertise with a coordinated European perspective, WG4 helps create a more visible, accessible and innovation-ready ecosystem for companies working with accelerator-based photon sources.

WG4 also contributes to the wider LEAPS innovation agenda by supporting other working groups on topics such as intellectual property, technology transfer, supplier engagement, industrial access models and the translation of facility-developed technologies into wider use.

WG4 has played a central role in demonstrating how Europe’s light sources can support industrial innovation, competitiveness and technology development. Through the LEAPS-INNOV project and related initiatives, the group helped build stronger links with companies as users, suppliers and co-development partners.

Activities have included SME-focussed access programmes, industry surveys, supplier engagement, workshops, technology transfer discussions and the development of shared approaches to industry interaction across LEAPS. The TamaTA and TamaTA-INNOV experiences have shown that simplified, subsidised and well-supported access strongly help SMEs overcome barriers such as cost, administrative complexity and limited familiarity with research infrastructures.

Recent work has also highlighted the value of early industry involvement in technology development for photon sources, including in areas such as detectors, optics, sample environments, insertion devices, data handling and advanced instrumentation. These activities support both the competitiveness of European companies and the long-term technological sovereignty of European research infrastructures.

Following the successful completion of LEAPS-INNOV, WG4 is focused on embedding and expanding the lessons learned into long-term LEAPS practice.

WG4 now is movin into a new project to design and construct a new automated spectroscopy service under the LEAPS TECH Horizon Europe project. Working closely with industry stakeholders in a co-design approach, this work will result in tailored sample holders, automated hardware on the beamlines and smart workflows for sample and data tracking and management.

WG4 will continue to build bridges between research infrastructures and industry, ensuring that Europe’s light sources are not only world-class scientific facilities, but also engines of innovation for European technology, manufacturing, materials, health, energy, environment, digital and deep-tech sectors.