Europlanet Teams Day returns on 12 November 2025! Join us online, for free, for a fast-paced day of networking themed around interactive activities and breakout sessions with our regional hubs, thematic committees and working groups.
Europlanet Teams Day will get the community talking and working together, with an emphasis on upcoming opportunities within Europlanet and within the broader European funding landscape.
Join us on 12 November to meet new collaborators within the Europlanet community, find out about upcoming opportunities and how you can be involved.
Welcome to Incoming EPEC Co-Chair – Thomas O’Sullivan
EPEC is thrilled to announce the appointment of a new co-chair, Thomas O’Sullivan!
Joining current co-chair Nimisha Verma, Thomas is taking over the post from Jessie Hogan.
An introduction from Thomas:
Hi! My name is Thomas O’Sullivan, and I’m a 2nd year PhD student at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany. My research focuses on the icy ocean worlds of the outer solar system, aiming to characterise chemistry and habitability, and to understand spacecraft sampling through laboratory and computational approaches. I’ve enjoyed working in several different countries across the world, and I’m enthusiastic about international collaboration in science, leading to my interest in Europlanet. I became involved with Europlanet in 2024, serving as the early careers officer for the German hub, and joining the organising team for EPSC 2025. I’m honoured to join the team as Co-Chair of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) network, taking over from Jessie after her amazing work over the past few years. I’m looking forward to working alongside Nimisha, the EPEC and Europlanet teams, and all of the early-career planetary scientists in Europe and beyond!
The results of the elections of the Europlanet Executive Board were announced at the Europlanet General Assembly at EPSC-DPS 2025 on Tuesday 9 September. Three new members were elected to the Board to join the President, two Vice-Presidents, Treasurer, Secretary and three Board Members.
Find out about their objectives and what they hope to achieve by serving on the Europlanet Executive Board over the next four years:
As a postdoctoral researcher, I understand both the opportunities and the challenges that shape the journeys of students, PhDs, and postdocs within our community. I have been actively involved in Europlanet for several years, through the Transnational Access scheme, the Early Career Communications Working Group, review panels, teaching resources, illustrating EPSC conferences, and speaking at the Early Career Annual Week. These roles have shown me the breadth of opportunities Europlanet provides for early career researchers, both within academia and in many other career paths.
If elected to the Executive Board, my priorities will be to highlight funding and training opportunities, so early career researchers are aware of the resources that can help their careers progress. I want to strengthen links with the Early Careers Network, acting as a facilitator between the grassroots community and Europlanet leadership. I will work to broaden career pathways, encouraging opportunities in communication, policy, and industry as well as academia. I will also support inclusivity and accessibility, helping to reduce barriers for underrepresented groups and under-resourced regions. Finally, I want to recognise and celebrate the contributions of young researchers, ensuring they feel connected, represented, and empowered within our community.
Séverine Robert – Planetary Atmospheres, Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy(BIRA/IASB)
Séverine Robert, Board Member (2025-2029)
I am a planetary scientist working on planetary atmospheres at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels. For the past five years, I have been actively involved in the Europlanet Regional Hubs. This experience has shown me the challenges of building and maintaining active local communities, but also reinforced my belief in the importance of creating these connections. I am convinced that our community becomes stronger, more impactful, and more resilient when we collaborate, share resources, and bring together diverse ideas.
If elected to the Executive Board, I will support Europlanet in sustaining its long-term activities, ensuring geographical inclusivity, and encouraging the participation of early-career researchers. I want to help shape the Society’s strategic direction, support existing initiatives, and bring new ideas with energy and commitment. I believe that learned societies such as Europlanet are essential for structuring our community, promoting our disciplines, and building bridges between science, society, and policy. As a Board member, I will be dedicated to actively representing the members, encouraging synergies across the Regional Hubs, and advancing the core values of openness and cooperation that lie at the heart of the Europlanet Society.
Stéphane Erard – Observatory of Paris / LIRA/ VESPA
Stéphane Erard, Board Member (2025-2029)
I am a planetary scientist at the Observatory of Paris / LIRA, working on the origin and evolution of terrestrial planets and small bodies, from Mars to asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mercury. My career bridges observation, modelling, and data stewardship, always with the aim of making scientific progress collaborative, open, and inclusive. Over three decades, I have contributed to major space missions such as Mars Express, Rosetta, Venus Express, and BepiColombo, alongside telescopic and laboratory studies of planetary surface spectroscopy. Since joining Europlanet-RI in 2009, I have led efforts to make Solar System data openly available, including coordinating the VESPA data access service, a cornerstone of Europlanet’s infrastructure.
If elected to the Board, I will work to strengthen data services for researchers and Pro-Am collaborations, expand collaboration between space agencies, institutions, and infrastructures such as EOSC, and support early-career researchers through training, mentorship, and international networking. I will also promote diversity and inclusion to reduce barriers for underrepresented groups and countries, and encourage sustainable practices in research infrastructure. I bring experience in data leadership, a deep knowledge of Europlanet’s frameworks, and a vision for a Society that is ambitious, inclusive, and socially responsible.
The EPEC network is organised by early career researchers, for early career researchers, and includes volunteers from across the global Europlanet community. EPEC strives to form a strong network of early careers by organising events and creating a platform for early careers to engage with the wider scientific community.
EPEC is led by two Co-Chairs, whose duty is to coordinate EPEC’s events and activities, complete periodic reports on ongoing activities, and liaise with Europlanet’s Executive Board and Executive Office. You will be the primary point of call for EPEC queries about joining, membership, activities and events for both committee and members. EPEC’s Co-Chairs play a crucial role in coordinating the community and its activities, making key decisions to benefit the EPEC network as a whole, encouraging new and innovative ideas and actively expanding the community.
EPEC’s Co-Chairs are responsible for:
Communications:
Acting as a central contact node within EPEC and directing people through the network
Managing and posting consistently on social media
Liaising with other EPEC members and Europlanet representatives via email
Creating and updating EPEC sections of the Europlanet website
Building relationships with other early career networks, like AbGradE
Operating a shared email inbox and participating proactively in email exchanges relating to EPEC
Consistent presence on social media, particularly on Discord
Coordinating with other EPEC members to stay up-to-date with new and existing EPEC activities
Reporting to the Europlanet Executive Board and providing input for Europlanet’s annual report
Representing EPEC at events: academic conferences, webinars, outreach presentations etc.
Gathering feedback from participants after events like EPEC Annual Week and EPEC @ EPSC.
EPEC is looking for one elected Committee Co-Chair for the next term to help sustain the Committee activities. The term of the elected EPEC Committee Co-Chair will be two years with an option to extend for an additional year. Theexpected time commitment of the elected EPEC Chair is approximately two hours per week, with increased commitment expected during EPEC Annual Week and around EPSC.
This is a great opportunity to join a vibrant community of early career researchers, learn valuable leadership skills and work closely with another experienced Co-Chair to help each other make the most of the experience. Europlanet is passionate about providing a supportive environment and a great platform for raising the profile of its early career members.
Eligibility to apply:
To be eligible for this position, you must meet the following requirements:
You must be a Europlanet member;
Leadership: In working with our diverse community, you must ensure that all points of view are heard and respected. If needed, both Co-Chairs must be able to facilitate discussions and make decisions in the best interests of the community;
Availability on Discord: Europlanet and EPEC use Discord as our main platform for brainstorming, community-building and exchange. Please ensure that you engage as consistently and proactively as possible;
You must be an early-career planetary scientist and/or space professional whose last degree (e.g. MSc or PhD) was obtained a maximum of 7 years ago (excluding parental leave, serious illness and similar delays).
We encourage applications from a diverse early career community (undergraduates, graduates, doctoral researchers and postdocs).
Join us online on 7 May for Europlanet Teams Day, a space to explore the different ways people contribute to Europlanet, how to be more involved, and what Europlanet can do for you. Themed around fast-paced, interactive activities and breakout sessions with our regional hubs and thematic committees and working groups, Europlanet Teams Day aims to get the community talking and working together.
Come and learn more about the bodies that make up the Europlanet community and where you fit into them.
Call for Applications for Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) Committee Co-Chair
The EPEC network is organised by early career researchers, for early career researchers, and includes volunteers from across the global Europlanet community. EPEC strives to form a strong network of early careers by organising events and creating a platform for early careers to engage with the wider scientific community.
The EPEC Committee, composed of chairs responsible for leading our activities and events, is led and coordinated by two Co-Chairs, whose duty is to make sure all the active events and activities are functioning nominally, fill periodic reports on ongoing activities, and liaise with the Europlanet Society Executive Board. You will be the primary point of call for EPEC queries about joining, membership, activities and events for both committee and members. EPEC’s Co-Chairs play a crucial role in coordinating the community and its activities, making key decisions that benefit the EPEC network as a whole, encouraging new and innovative ideas and actively expanding the community.
EPEC’s Co-Chairs are responsible for:
Communications:
Acting as a central contact node within EPEC and directing people through the network
Managing and posting consistently on social media
Liaising with other EPEC members and Europlanet representatives via email
Creating and updating EPEC sections of the Europlanet website
Building relationships with other early career networks, like AbGradE
Operating a shared email inbox and participating proactively in email exchanges relating to EPEC
Consistent presence on social media, particularly on Discord
Coordinating with other EPEC members to stay up-to-date with new and existing EPEC activities
Reporting to the Europlanet Executive Board and providing input for Europlanet’s annual report
Representing EPEC at events: academic conferences, webinars, outreach presentations etc.
Gathering feedback from participants after events like EPEC Annual Week and EPEC @ EPSC.
EPEC is looking for one elected Committee Co-Chair for the next term to help sustain the Committee activities. The term of the elected EPEC Committee Co-Chair will be two years with an option to extend for an additional year. Theexpected time commitment of the elected EPEC Chair is approximately two hours per week, with increased commitment expected during EPEC Annual Week and around EPSC.
This is a great opportunity to join a vibrant community of early career researchers, learn valuable leadership skills and work closely with another experienced Co-Chair to help each other make the most of the experience. Europlanet is passionate about providing a supportive environment and a great platform for raising the profile of its early career members.
Eligibility to apply:
To be eligible for this position, you must meet the following requirements:
You must be a member of the Europlanet Society;
Leadership: In working with our diverse community, you must ensure that all points of view are heard and respected. If needed, both Co-Chairs must be able to facilitate discussions and make decisions in the best interests of the community;
Availability on Discord: Europlanet and EPEC use Discord as our main platform for brainstorming, community-building and exchange. Please ensure that you engage as consistently and proactively as possible;
You must be an early-career planetary scientist and/or space professional whose last degree (e.g. MSc or PhD) was obtained a maximum of 7 years ago (excluding parental leave, serious illness and similar delays).
We encourage applications from a diverse early career community (undergraduates, graduates, doctoral researchers and postdocs).
The future competitiveness of the European Research Area in science and technology is predicated upon the ERA having a Research Infrastructure (RI) based on facilities and people. Modern science and technology require access to state-of-the-art facilities, both large (e.g. synchrotrons, accelerators) and medium/small (e.g. suites of analytical tools). These may be based in custom-built sites, on the premises of universities, or at national institutes. Facilities are not restricted to laboratories but also embrace field-sites, computational and data bases/archives with both on-site or virtual access.
Europe has built up a complex, multidisciplinary set of RIs that support a myriad of science and technology embracing all fields, such that European Researchers and European industry are able to act at the forefront of modern research with examples including AI and machine learning, astronomy, climate change, nanotechnology, next-generation health care and quantum computing. Uniquely, the majority of these facilities are open to all European researchers at no cost to the user. Hence, we have been able to exploit the full intellectual capacity of ERA home to over 2 million researchers.
RIs may be single-site in Europe or internationally (e.g. CERN or European Southern Observatory (ESO)), or ‘Distributed’ across many sites and nation states e.g. European Synchrotron network. However, such a RI has grown largely organically with access funding often relying upon direct Funding from the EC Framework programmes. Future funding and models for the sustaining of ERA RIs are now in question and alternative structural and funding models for the ERA RI network are being developed ranging from the 29 European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs) often led by governmental organisations to growing numbers of Associations internationale sans but lucrative (AISBLs) commonly organised and led by the community of academics and institutions. One size and structure does not fit all, and the operability and sustainability of ERA RIs are and will be necessarily varied. However, discussions between different RIs to share operational models and examples of good practice are required.
This one-day meeting is arranged to directly follow the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) meeting held in Szeged, Hungary, 16-17 September 2024. The meeting is open to all ERA RIs and builds upon the recently published ESFRI landscape analysis of ERA RIs. The meeting is focused upon two specific topics:
13.00 Introduction – Mr. Roland Jakab, CEO, HUN-REN
13.05 The ESFRI landscape/perspective – Professor Peter Lèvai (HUN-REN Wigner RCP, Budapest)
13.20 The League of Accelerator-based Photon Sources as an integral part of Europe’s RI ecosystem – Professor Jakub Szlachetko LEAPS Coordinator, SOLARIS National Synchroton Radiation Centre, Poland
13.35 As climate change is continuing – how to organise the sustainability of ICOS? – Emmanuel Salmon
13.50 The role and importance of small to medium sized Distributed Research Infrastructures in sustaining European research competitiveness – Dr Oguz Ozkan, European Science Foundation
14.05 The NEPHEWS project; co-funding PaN RI, working with PaN user communities – Dr. Cormac McGuinness, Trinity College Dublin
14.20 Research Infrastructures and Networks Beyond EC funding – Models and a Case Study for Sustainable Operations – Anita Heward, Europlanet
14.35 Session 1 Panel and Open Forum Future RI models and their sustainability – Chair: Nigel Mason, Europlanet
15:30 Coffee Break
Widening participation in the ERA – The role of RIs
Chair: Peter Lèvai
16.00 EU RI landscape – Geographical Distribution and RIs in less represented states – Nigel Mason Europlanet
16.15 CERIC – A distributed infrastructure in materials, biomaterials and nanotechnolog – Ornela De Giacomo, CERIC Deputy Executive Director
16.30 ELI – A major RI in Central Europe – Zsolt Fülöp, ELI ERIC
16.45 The Europlanet experience in HUN-REN Atomki – Professor Bela Sulik, HUN-REN Atomki
17.00 Training and retaining RI staff – Prof. Enrico Guarini, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
17.15 Panel and Open Forum. How can we widen participation /develop RIs in less represented regions of Europe?
Chair: István Szabó HUN-REN
End 18.00
Session 1. Models of ERA RIs and their Sustainability
The EU research infrastructure community remains poorly connected and acts in many disparate ways. It is thus often hard for agencies and governmental organisations to understand and navigate the EU RI landscape. In this session we will review the different types of ERA RIs, their structure (and the advantages and disadvantages of each). We will aim to characterize some of the terms widely used (but with different definitions in different communities) such as ‘Distributed Research Infrastructures’, discuss how ERA RIs may work more closely together to optimise their functionality (many facilities are in more than one RI with each RI operating different management and access provisions) and increase their visibility and impact to disparate user communities (including industry). Different models for long-term sustainability of RIs will be discussed and debated. Finally, the provision for cooperation and information exchange between ERA RIs will be discussed with the option of hosting biannual meetings
Session 2. 2. Widening Participation in ERA RIs
The vast majority of ERA RIs draw upon facilities based in a limited number of countries. To date, there are fewer facilities and thus less institutional membership of RIs from the nation-states in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. In this session we aim to review this landscape and explore both the potential and the challenges for facilities and RIs in these regions. This discussion is topical for both the Hungarian Presidency (2024) and Polish Presidency (2025).The discussion aims to identify those initiatives that are present in the region that help the connection of the EU-15 and EU-13 countries’ researchers through the domestic research infrastructures. These infrastructures are playing a pivotal role in enabling researchers to use the scale-up facilities that are present mostly in the EU-15 (with the exception of the one ELI ERIC). Also, the national infrastructures are nodes of many distributed research infrastructures, and as such they can contribute to economic development as well either through their own development or through in-kind contributions to the large-scale research infrastructures.
Venue:
The Venue is close to the ELTe Department of Atomic Physics and the Department of Geophysics and Space.
The nearest hotel to the venue is the Radisson Hotel Budapest BudaPart (1117 Budapest, Dombóvári út 25 A). A range of more affordable hotels are available over the river, with self-catering apartments available near the venue bookable through Booking.com.
Organising Committee
Professor N J Mason, Atomki and Europlanet Zsolt Fülöp, HUN-REN Atomki Dr Szabó István, HUN-REN
Following the success of the COPCA 2022 Conference, we are proud to announce a second iteration: the COPCA 2024 Conference will take place between 15-18 October 2024 in Valletta, Malta!
The Collisions Physics and Chemistry and their Applications (COPCA) conference in 2024 will bring together scientific researchers from several interdisciplinary fields to share their research and results. This year, a particular focus will be placed on processes relevant to radiation chemistry and physics, astrophysics and astrochemistry, and materials science.
This year, the conference will take place alongside a thematically-related workshop of the COST Action CA20129 “Multiscale Irradiation and Chemistry-Driven Processes and Related Technologies” (MultIChem). Sessions related to this workshop will be held on 15 and 16 October 2024. For more information on this COST Action, please click here.
The venue for the conference is the Aula Magna, situated at the Valletta Campus of the University of Malta.
The early bird conference fee (applicable up to 31 July 2024) is €425. From 01 August 2024 onwards, the regular conference fee of €575 will apply. Options are also available for accompanying persons.
Early career researchers (ECRs), including undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as post-doctoral researchers, are particularly encouraged to attend and to contribute to the success of COPCA 2024. In order to encourage the participation of ECRs, a session will be held to allow several ECRs to showcase their work in 10-minute presentations. These presentations will be judged by an independent panel and prizes will be awarded to the best presentations!
The Collision Physics and Chemistry and their Applications (COPCA) conference will bring together scientific researchers from several interdisciplinary fields to share their research and results. Discussions and lectures will be held on various topics which broadly fall under the theme of ‘collision physics and chemistry’, including: nanotechnology, radiation biology and its application to medicine, plasma and fusion science, battery technology, electron and positron physics, as well as planetary and space science.
This year, the conference will be held at the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Valletta (Malta) and will celebrate the centenary year of the famous Ramsauer-Townsend Experiment, in which physicists Carl Ramsauer and John Sealy Townsend demonstrated the scattering of low-energy electrons by noble gas atoms. A historical plenary on the experiment and its scientific ramifications will be given by Prof. Nigel J. Mason during the conference.
Early career researchers (ECRs), including undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as post-doctoral researchers, are particularly encouraged to attend and to contribute to the success of COPCA 2022. In order to encourage ECRs to showcase their research work, a One-Minute Poster Challenge will be held on the first day of the conference, for which prizes will be awarded to the top posters by judges from industry and academia!
Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
Europlanet AISBL (Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif – 0800.634.634) is hosted by the Department of Planetary Atmospheres of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Avenue Circulaire 3, B-1180 Brussels, Belgium.
