GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung

Darmstadt, Germany

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About the employer

The GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt operates a worldwide leading accelerator facility for research purposes.

About 1,520 employees are working at GSI. In addition, every year approximately 1,000 researchers from universities and other research institutes around the world come to GSI to use the facility for experiments.

GSI is a limited liability company (GmbH). Shareholders are the German Federal Government with 90 %, the State of Hesse with 8 %, the State of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Free State of Thuringia with 1 % each. They are represented in the GSI supervisory board by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the respective state ministries. GSI is a member of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest research organization.

FAIR — Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research

At GSI, FAIR is currently being built, an international accelerator facility for the research with antiprotons and ions which is being developed and constructed in cooperation with international partners. It is one of the world’s largest construction projects for international cutting-edge research. The FAIR project was initiated by the scientific community and researchers of GSI. The GSI accelerators will become part of the future FAIR facility and serve as the first acceleration stage.

For the realization of FAIR the FAIR GmbH, an international company under German law, was founded. The shareholders of FAIR come from nine countries: Finland, France, Germany, India, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden. The United Kingdom is associated. The Czech Republic is aspirant partner.

The FAIR GmbH has about 60 employees. The GSI GmbH is the German shareholder and also the main shareholder of the international FAIR GmbH. GSI is responsible for the development, production and testing of substantial components of the FAIR accelerator facility and the experiment setups. The efficient cooperation of FAIR and GSI is enabled by the joint organization of both GmbHs under one Management Board.

Beyond the shareholders, about 3,000 scientists from about 50 countries take part in the development of the experiments and the scientific program of FAIR. They will come to FAIR and GSI in Darmstadt as visiting scientists in the future to use the facility for research.

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