Four universities in Poland and Romania now agreed to become GET_INvolved partners by listing GSI/FAIR as receiving organization for the Erasmus+ scholarship programme. Students and graduates from these universities may now apply for Erasmus+ scholarships using a simplified procedure to enable them an internship, traineeship or research stay at GSI and FAIR in Darmstadt.

The optimal support of top junior scientists is one of the decisive tasks for research institutions such as GSI and FAIR. An important instrument to achieve this goal is the international FAIR School. It is designed for young PhD students to get an overview on the whole FAIR science program. This summer, the established FAIR School will be held in its sixth edition and is currently open for application.

The shareholders of FAIR GmbH had decided in 2015 to have the project re-evaluated in the spring of 2019. The international committee of experts charged of the evaluation has now presented its final report to the shareholders of FAIR GmbH. In addition to scientific and technical aspects, the experts also analyzed the currently foreseeable increase in the cost of the project as well as time delays and in-kind services provided by international partners and other risks.

A next milestone has been achieved for the FAIR accelerator center, currently one of the largest construction projects for research. The first tunnel segment of the central ring accelerator SIS100 is completed in its shell construction. On this occasion, the management board of GSI and FAIR together with a team of responsible employees took a joint on-site inspection of the SIS100 construction site area.

The EU project STRONG-2020 with participation of GSI and FAIR has been approved by the EU commission and is planned to start in summer 2019. One aim of STRONG-2020 is to promote the access to the important large research infrastructures in Europe to study the properties of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions and to transfer the resulting technical progress of the experiments into new applications. Open questions of the strong interaction will be addressed on theoretical and...

Professor Peter Braun-Munzinger, the Scientific Director of the ExtreMe Matter Institute EMMI at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, and Professor Johanna Stachel from Heidelberg University have been jointly awarded the prestigious Stern-Gerlach Medal by the German Physical Society (DPG).

With the focus on producing the highest quality equipment, the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Switzerland and the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt work closely together on testing accelerator magnets. To this purpose, they have convenated a cooperation agreement, under which the test operation has started. The first magnet has been delivered to CERN and will be subjected to detailed quality tests.

In April 2019 the 9th International Masterclass took place at FAIR and GSI. 17 high-school students were invited to become scientists for a day and to analyze data from the ALICE experiment at the LHC accelerator at CERN in Geneva. GSI has had a major part in the construction and the scientific program of ALICE from the beginning.

Norbert Altenkamp, member of the Bundestag, visited GSI and FAIR. The CDU politician from the Main-Taunus district is a member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. Important topics during his visit on Thursday 28 March 2019 were the progress of the FAIR project and the current scientific activities on campus.