Speaker
Description
The European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) advises CERN and its member states on long-term planning for European high-energy facilities, fostering coordination across laboratories, universities, and international organisations.
Since late 2024, ECFA-UK has consulted the particle physics community—including related areas such as accelerators, computing, and detector development—to reach a broad consensus on the UK’s input to the 2026 update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics (ESPPU). This includes articulation of national accelerator priorities within the wider European context. Coordinated through the UK ECFA delegation, the process offers insight into how the UK organises and contributes to this collective planning — an overview of the approach, outcomes, and lessons for the accelerator community will be presented.
The presentation will also report on progress towards the UK’s engagement with CERN, as set out in the STFC and DSIT strategy published in October 2023. Implementation efforts aim to create practical routes through which UK accelerator science can align with and influence CERN’s evolving programmes.
It will further summarise key points from the 2025 JENAS (Joint ECFA-NuPECC-ApPEC) symposium and the 2024 Plenary ECFA (P-ECFA) visit to the UK. Both events provided valuable perspectives on Europe-wide coordination across particle, nuclear, and astro-particle physics, and offered feedback relevant to UK accelerator efforts and international positioning.
The presentation will conclude by reflecting on how the UK accelerator community might further strengthen its voice, visibility, and influence in shaping Europe’s scientific direction.
