The aim of the event is to help build the scientific community of future users of large international facilities where Slovakia has contractual commitments as a consortium member (European XFEL Hamburg, ILL Grenoble, EST Canary Islands), where the Slovak scientific community is interested in such membership (ESRF Grenoble), or where it successfully carries out experiments (DESY Hamburg, Diamond LS in the UK, ALBA in Spain, SOLARIS in Kraków, PSI in Switzerland, MAX IV in Sweden, etc.).
The event was attended by a record 120 participants. Thanks to financial support from the Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic (MŠVVaM SR), European XFEL and ILL Grenoble, the organizers were able to register 80 students from all three levels of study, primarily from Slovakia but also, to a lesser extent, from the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Serbia and Ukraine, along with international students at our universities and young researchers from Slovak universities and institutes of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. This support also made it possible to invite 35 invited speakers from 15 countries worldwide. As is traditional, the invited guests included leading figures from international scientific facilities as well as Slovak scientists who have succeeded in international scientific competition and shared their experience with the participants of SFEL 2026.
