ESO Industry Information Day 2015
Background
The Irish government has stated in its Innovation 2020 document that Ireland should enter negotiations with the European Southern Observatory to examine the options for Irish membership. Subsequently it was stated that this process should occur in parallel with discussions on regarding membership of the nuclear physics group CERN, and these negotiations have already commenced, with fact-finding visits to both sites being scheduled for mid-2016.
On the industrial front, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has just commenced construction of the billion-euro European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This major construction project is expected to take ten years to complete, and important opportunities for Irish industry could be available in:
- Civil engineering
- Steel structure fabrication and assembly
- Precision actuation, metrology and control
- Optics, opto-mechanics and detector systems
- Cryogenics, vacuum systems and coating systems
For example ESO’s ongoing technology programme will partner with industry to develop a variety of novel technologies including: Precision actuation & control, Advanced light sources, Real time computing. In addition there will be a requirement for new instrumentation suites that will be developed by international consortia, and these will be multi-million euro opportunities for industry.
ESO Industry Day information
An information day for Irish industry was held in TCD on 26th March 2015 with partial funding support provided by the Institute of Physics, Ireland. Pdf files of the presentations are available by clicking on the links below:
ESO and Ireland
- The Irish Perspective - Paul Callanan (UCC)
- ESO - Irish Membership Process - Laura Comendados-Frutos (ESO)
- Openet industrial potential – Joe Hogan
- Enbio industrial potential - John O'Donoghue
ESO staff contributions
- ESO General Introduction - Laura Comendados-Frutos (ESO)
- Science at ESO - Mark Casali (ESO)
- The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) - Mark Casali (ESO)
- ESO Procurement - Arnaut Tromp (ESO)
Industrial Benefits to current members
- The UK Experience - Colin Vincent (STFC, UK)
- Working with ESO - Tommi Kilpeläinen (BlueCielo, Finland)
Further information
Further information on ESO can be found on the ESO website: www.eso.org.
The Institute of Physics in Ireland put together a brochure on the benefits to Ireland of ESO membership.
Click here to download the document.