Paul Scherrer Institute
Swiss federal research institute
Follow Paul Scherrer Institute on Notably News to receive short updates to your email — rarely!
| 2024 | PSI researchers set a world record for X-ray imaging precision at SLS, achieving a four-nanometre resolution using ptychography. The collaborative work with EPFL, ETH Zurich, and University of Southern California was published in Nature, demonstrating high-resolution 3D imaging of a computer chip. |
| 2024 | PSI researchers, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, published a study suggesting that digitalisation could reduce Switzerland's energy consumption by 10% to 20% by 2050 compared to 2020 levels, using a detailed energy system model with six million equations and variables. |
| 2024 | ESA and PSI signed an agreement to establish the European Space Deep-Tech Innovation Centre (ESDI) near the PSI campus, including a research platform called Phi-Lab. |
| 2023 | PSI researchers, working with Indian institutions, investigated night-time smog formation in New Delhi, discovering a unique process where emissions from wood and waste burning condense into fine particles in cooler temperatures. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience. |
| 2023 | PSI developed the RADEM radiation detector for ESA's JUICE mission to Jupiter. |
| 2021 | PSI launched the FLAME measuring station at the Swiss Muon Source (SμS), expanding its research capabilities with a new instrument for materials science and particle physics experiments. |
| 2020 | PSI had treated over 7,500 patients with ocular tumours, with a success rate of over 98 percent for eye therapy using the OPTIS facility. |
| 2020 | PSI becomes the only institute in the world providing four key probes for researching condensed matter structure and dynamics (neutrons, muons, synchrotron radiation, and X-ray free-electron laser) on a single campus for the international user community. |
| September 2020 | The second beamline ATHOS of the SwissFEL free-electron laser was scheduled to begin operations in autumn 2020, further enhancing the institute's research infrastructure. |
| June 2020 | SINQ returns to operation after upgrade, now capable of providing an average of five times more neutrons for experiments, and up to 30 times more in special cases. |
| 2019 | PSI initiates a comprehensive upgrade of SINQ's neutron guide systems to improve neutron transport efficiency. |
| 2018 | Joël Mesot, PSI Director from 2008 to 2018, was elected President of ETH Zurich. |
| 2018 | The first beamline ARAMIS of the SwissFEL free-electron laser came into operation, expanding the institute's advanced research capabilities. |
| 2018 | PSI team awarded the Watt d'Or by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy for developing a method to extract more methane gas from biowaste, tested using the Energy System Integration (ESI) experimental platform in collaboration with Energie 360°. |
| June 2018 | Gantry 3, another proton therapy treatment station, was opened. |
| 2017 | A new SLS instrument enables non-destructive imaging of a computer chip, revealing internal structures like 45 nanometre power lines and 34 nanometre transistors. |
| July 2017 | PSI researchers used the Synchrotron Light Source to investigate and visualize the three-dimensional alignment of magnetization in a magnetic object without affecting the material. |
| 2016 | PSI inaugurated the SwissFEL free-electron X-ray laser, enabling researchers to analyze dynamic processes in biomolecules with extremely high time resolution (less than a trillionth of a second). |
| December 5 2016 | The SwissFEL free-electron laser was officially opened by Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann, marking a significant milestone for the Paul Scherrer Institute's research facilities. |
| January 2016 | 20 kilograms of plutonium were transferred from PSI to the USA, contributing to global non-proliferation efforts and eliminating separated plutonium from Swiss territory. |
| 2013 | The second treatment station, Gantry 2, developed at PSI, went into operation. |
| July 4 2012 | A PSI-built 'barrel pixel detector' was involved in detecting the Higgs boson at CERN, a discovery that would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year. |
| 2011 | PSI researchers deciphered the basic structure of the rhodopsin protein molecule using the Synchrotron Light Source. |
| 2010 | An international team of researchers at PSI used negative muons to measure the proton radius, finding it significantly smaller than previously thought at 0.84184 femtometers. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Paul Scherrer Institute, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.