Nordic Particle Accelerator Program Erasmus Project

Project Title

Nordic Particle Accelerator Program

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Background
Europe are investing large sums on particle accelerators in order for Europe to be innovative and competitive in material sciences, biomedicine, health care, physics and chemistry. A consequence is a growing demand for skilled scientists and engineers in accelerator technology. The Nordic Particle Accelerator Programme (NPAP) is founded on a three year transnational effort, and is the first step in making Lund an international center for education in accelerator technology. The project has developed educational resources, such as Summershools and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), to enhance knowledge and broaden understanding of accelerator technology among academy, research institutes, hospitals and companies. Thus providing a teaching and learning concept and platform that can connect seemingly disparate disciplines and activities together.

Objectives
The overall objective has been to ensure future European accelerator expertise that can exploit, develop and improve current and future particle accelerators.

Number and profile of participating organisations
NPAP involves eight participating organisations. Lund University initiated the project and is coordinator. MAX IV Laboratory, European Spallation Source (ESS), and the universities of Uppsala, Aarhus, Oslo and Jyväskylä are primary partners (along with other European universities and CERN). All partners have expertise in different areas of accelerator technology and have complemented each other in multi-disciplinary, synergic and excellent ways in the creation of the projects IO’s.

Description of undertaken main activities
Our strategy has been to develop and implement new activities for exchanging good practices and promoting academic programs in the field of accelerators through campus-based learning as well as e-learning. Other results were disseminated through seminars, events and networking activities.

Results and impact attained
The NPAP digitised teaching, learning and digital competences of educators and students by designing new modules/MOOCs “Introduction to accelerators”, “Fundamentals of accelerators and accelerator technology” and “Medical applications of particle accelerators”. Setting innovative activities to achieve blended mobility. Our MOOCs are accessible to the 33 million learners on the Coursera.org learning platform and as separate educational films on the NPAC Youtube Channel.
The NPAP-project fostered links between Education and Research & Innovation. Through the summer schools and MOOCs it has transferred accelerator research results to Bachelor and Master students, doctoral candidates and academic staff. It also facilitated cooperation and specific mobility schemes in research teams to explore contemporary research problems and develop research skills.
Our project put in place activities that ensure inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches, and strengthen the role of higher education institutions and research institutes in their local and regional environments. We have encouraged students to conduct their master’s / Ph.D. projects in accelerator physics.

This pioneering work has gained a lot of interest from the community of accelerators and at CERN a similar project has been initiated but for students at master level. We have proposed new and innovative tools for the Human Resources at ESS and MAXIV, and give visibility of those projects to the whole international scientific community. The NPAS has also functioned as a feeder-school for Joint Universities Accelerator School (JUAS) by preparing students at Bachelor/early Master for JUAS’ intensive university-accredited programs.
For more information and contact please visit www.npap.eu

Longer-term benefits
Our aim is to create the Nordic Particle Accelerator Center (NPAC) in Lund based on the NPAP framework/courses’ outputs and outcomes. NPAP was an important first step in this effort where we established and strengthened a network between the partner institutions, while organising seminars and events related to accelerator sciences. The NPAC will have a large impact on the education of accelerator science in Europe and in the exchange of students at Master’s and Bachelor’s levels. It will also convey opportunities to employment for newly graduated students from all of Europe. The blended learning modular structure, permits to expand to further topics, to be covered in future IOs. NPAP focused on the accelerators and in the next step we like to show how the X-rays produced at MAX IV and the neutron produced at ESS can be used in research performed at universities and companies. We will further develop cooperation with CERN and JUAS. The NPAC will initiate a coordination of the courses on accelerator science taught at Lund University, MAX IV and ESS. Finally, the potential longer-term benefits of this program is the intrinsic nature of the MOOCs connected to the accelerator school series supported by the new network in the Northern part of Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 313499 Eur

Project Coordinator

LUNDS UNIVERSITET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• JYVASKYLAN YLIOPISTO
• AARHUS UNIVERSITET
• EUROPEAN SPALLATION SOURCE ESS AB
• UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
• UPPSALA UNIVERSITET