HERCULES Launches its First Asia-Pacific School in Taiwan

Abstract

HERCULES (Higher European Research Course for Users of Large Experimental System) School, co-organized by Université Joseph Fourier and Grenoble INP, has provided training for students, postdocs, and scientists from European and non-European universities and laboratories in the fields of synchrotron radiation and neutron science for condensed matter studies (biology, chemistry, physics, materials science, geosciences, industrial applications) since 1991. Throughout the years spent cultivating next-generation scientists, HERCULES School has been recognized as an internationally known training course. Given the success of the course in Europe, the Hercules Specialized Course (HSC) decided to cooperate with an overseas synchrotron radiation facility every five years to help nourish more young scientists outside Europe. The first overseas Hercules School, known as the Latin-American Edition of Hercules in Brazil, was co-organized by HSC and the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory in 2010. After this first successful overseas course in Latin America, Wen-Guey Wu, the past director of the Science and Technology Division of the National Science Council of Taiwan in France, recommended the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC) in Taiwan to the founder and the previous chairman of HSC, Jean-René Regnard, for co-organizing the second overseas Hercules School. An Asia-Pacific Edition of HERCULES in Taiwan was then in place for 2015.