CETS2019 – a successful 13th Central European Training School on Neutron Techniques

5 – 10 May 2019, Budapest

(by Adél Len)

Participants of CETS 2019

The Central European Training Schools have been organized since 1992, first bi-annually, then annually by the Budapest Neutron Center (BNC) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This year’s event was the 13th in the series. The primary objective of the CET schools has been to provide actual hands-on-practices –following a short theoretical introduction to neutron scattering and to the various neutron based methods for studying structure and composition of matter.

Due to space restrictions at the experimental stations, only twenty-eight of the fifty BSC and MSC and doctoral students, post docs, young researchers who applied had to be selected from 13 countries (Albania, Argentina, South Korea, Egypt, France, Georgia, China, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey). Selection was made on the participants’ motivation, home project and recommendations. The participants expressed lively interest both in the theoretical presentations and during the hands-on practices.

15 hours of theoretical lectures were held by leading researchers from ESS, Lund, Sweden, JINR, Dubna, Russia, Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB), Germany and the University of Vienna, Austria as well as BNC, Budapest Hungary. In groups of five, the participants carried out hands-on practices of a total of 15 (5 × 3) hours per group at the experimental stations, tutored by BNC experts. This year the participants were offered the choice from eight experimental stations representing six different methods, such as low-angle neutron scattering, neutron diffraction, neutron reflection, neutron activation analysis, prompt-gamma activation analysis and neutron radiography.

On the opening day of the school, the participants displayed posters and gave a short presentation of their home project. On the closing day of the school the attendees received their well-deserved diplomas.

Further details and picture gallery on the www.bnc.hu pages.