The Crafoord Foundation awards 7 MSEK to LINXS for strategic developments, including bespoke data clinics to increase research outputs from experiments

The Crafoord funding to LINXS was announced at the LINXS inaugural conference, 17-18 June, by Sven Lidin, who is a member of the Crafoord Foundation’s board, and former dean of the Science Faculty at Lund University.

We are delighted to announce that the Crafoord Foundation has awarded 7.0 MSEK to LINXS. The funding represents a key development in LINXS’ mission as an advanced study institute to promote and strengthen neutron and X-ray research and build international networks to maximise the benefits of large-scale research facilities such as MAX IV and ESS.

The funding will be used to fund new strategic initiatives at LINXS, aimed at reducing current challenges for scientists to analyse their experimental data. Beginning in autumn of 2025, LINXS will start ’data clinics’ to support scientists to work with data acquired at facilities such as MAX IV and ESS. Over time, the aim is to promote ’digital twinning’ of different beamlines and to create a knowledge base to accelerate data analysis and processing.

– Today, research outputs from experiments are quite slow, mainly due to bottlenecks and lack of capacity in data analysis. With this effort, we believe that we can contribute to reducing the period between experiments and peer-reviewed research articles, says Professor Trevor Forsyth, LINXS Director.

The funding will also support efforts to strengthen the attractiveness of LINXS’ themes and LINXS activities; support the co-funding of postdoc positions connected to LINXS Young Researchers’ Initiatives – which aim to support the creation of networks and knowledge sharing amongst young career researchers – and to further improve LINXS in maximising the exploitation of large scale research facilities.

– For LINXS, this funding is crucial in the provision it makes for much-needed hardware for the clinics, and for researchers to process their data. It will also boost LINXS’ role as a knowledge hub where national and international researchers can meet to develop science and experimental approaches, says Trevor Forsyth.

The funding grant was awarded to LINXS in May 2025 from the Crafoord Foundation.