Update from LINXS Director
LINXS Director Trevor Forsyth. Photo: Kennet Ruona.
2026 has started with several very dynamic kickoff events. The SMILE theme on Soft Matter in Life began in early January, and the SHINE theme on Scattering and Imaging for Health Insights and New Evidence started in late February — both with extremely well-attended kickoff meetings. This will be followed by the kickoff events for the Semiconductors theme (this week) and for the Pandemics and Alertness (PandA) theme in early March. LINXS now has a total of ten themes, offering a considerable amount of potential for interdisciplinary interaction between them as well as a lot of scope for engagement with the Young Researchers' Initiatives (YRI).
The ongoing themes have also been extremely busy. An interactive workshop organised by RheoMAXESS, in collaboration with AIDA, discussed the use of rheometry techniques across bio/med-tech, food, and materials. The QMat theme has also just held an excellent workshop on experimental signatures of quantum correlations and topology in neutron and X-ray techniques.
The AMBER postdoctoral cohort is steadily growing – 27 ambitious researchers have been recruited so far. These researchers are being encouraged to engage with the LINXS YRI initiatives and in addition are having periodic meetings themselves at LINXS with external participants connecting online. They bring a great deal of enthusiasm and breadth of experience to LINXS and to the academic environment, linking a wide diversity of biological and biomedical imaging science. The fifth AMBER recruitment call is still open for another few days – so please promote these opportunities widely!
The latest LINXS National and International Theme Call has just closed – for which we received the highest number of applications ever. This emphasises the value of the thematic model in promoting and catalysing new scientific actions and in bringing together diverse capability and infrastructures. The selection process is carried out by an external Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) – to whom we are very grateful for the tireless and impartial review work they undertake. The theme proposals pass through a two stage review.
We share a number interviews and articles about recent theme and YRI activities organised at LINXS on our website. It is great to see how the Young Researchers’ Initiatives are growing – in December, a group of researchers organised a workshop on tomography, followed by an event focusing on soft matter research. Both activities were successful in bringing together early-career researchers and supporting their learning and career development.
We warmly welcome our new Administrative and Event Assistant, Mia Lindström, whom some of you have already met. She started in early January and will support Josefin Martell, LINXS Science Activities Manager. We also extend a belated welcome to Professor Lars Tranvik from Uppsala University, who visited LINXS in the autumn as a guest researcher with the Environment and Climate theme and is planning to return in spring.
Finally, we want to invite you all to our small mingle at LINXS on 17 March to celebrate our first anniversary at The Loop!