EuPRAXIA Showcases Future Accelerator Infrastructure at RTI Summit 2025

The Research and Technology Infrastructures (RTI) Summit 2025 took place from 22 to 23 October in Copenhagen, bringing together Europe’s leading voices in science, innovation, and policy. Hosted under the Danish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the event aimed to shape a shared European strategy for RTIs and explore how these infrastructures can drive scientific discovery, industrial competitiveness, and societal progress. 

As Europe’s first project to design and implement a dedicated plasma-based particle accelerator infrastructure, EuPRAXIA was proud to be among the exhibitors at this influential event. Represented at Booth 39, EuPRAXIA coordinator Dr Pierluigi Campana and colleagues Dr Antonio Falone, Dr Joseph Wolfenden and Dr Alessandro Vannozzi engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, from European Commission officials and national funding agencies to scientists, engineers, and innovation strategists, highlighting how the project is pioneering a new generation of compact, sustainable, and high-performance accelerator technologies.

EuPRAXIA’s presence at the RTI Summit underscored its growing role as a pan-European research infrastructure bridging frontier science and technological application. The project’s exhibit presented its vision of laser and electron beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration, capable of providing electron beams and radiation sources with unprecedented efficiency and precision. Visitors learned about the project’s roadmap towards implementation, including planned facilities in Italy and the Czech Republic, and how EuPRAXIA aims to serve a broad user community in fields ranging from materials science and medicine to electronics and high-energy physics.

Beyond showcasing its scientific and technological progress, EuPRAXIA used the Summit as an opportunity for strategic dialogue. In line with the event’s overarching theme, the development of a coherent European strategy for research and technology infrastructures, EuPRAXIA sought input from stakeholders on operational models, governance frameworks, and long-term sustainability.

The Summit featured keynote talks from leading voices in European science policy, including Nobel Laureate Morten Meldal, Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science Christina Egelund, and José Luis Martínez, Chair of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). Discussions explored how to strengthen the connection between research infrastructures and technology infrastructures, bridging the gap between scientific discovery and industrial deployment. For EuPRAXIA, these themes resonated strongly with its aim: to provide cutting-edge accelerator capability that supports both fundamental research and applied innovation.

Dr Joseph Wolfenden said “The RTI Summit was a valuable opportunity to show how EuPRAXIA is shaping the future of accelerator science in Europe. The discussions on bridging research and technology infrastructures, and on the value of distributed models, strongly resonated with our approach. EuPRAXIA brings together complementary expertise across multiple sites to deliver a unified, user-focused facility. We look forward to building on these strategic conversations as the project moves toward implementation.”

The RTI Summit’s emphasis on Europe’s collective strategy for infrastructures aligns perfectly with EuPRAXIA’s vision of distributed excellence. By connecting multiple national laboratories and research centres under a shared framework, the project exemplifies how collaborative infrastructure design can deliver innovation capacity across borders.

As Europe moves toward implementing its new RTI strategy, EuPRAXIA remains committed to playing a central role in shaping how advanced accelerator infrastructures contribute to scientific, industrial, and societal transformation. Engagements like RTI 2025 reaffirm the project’s place within the broader European research landscape, linking visionary technology development with long-term strategic impact.