Invited to speak on our high-level guidelines at IPAC 2025 in Taiwan!

This summer, I had the absolute honour of being invited to give a talk at the International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC) 2025. This year, IPAC was based in Taipei, Taiwan, so before my invite I had originally decided not to attend on the grounds of environmental impacts. However, being given a talk at IPAC is not something I felt I should turn down, 1) because of the reach my talk on sustainability in accelerators and research could have, and 2) because – quite frankly – I’m an early career researcher and at some point I’m going to need to job hunt.

The conference itself was fantastic, with such a broad scientific programme. I was pleased to see a talk from Ben Shepherd on “Assessing and increasing the sustainability of future accelerator based facilities” alongside quite a few talks that included or at least mentioned sustainability, and to talk to some poster presenters who presented significant work towards sustainability.

I gave my talk on the Tuesday of IPAC, with some still quite intense jet lag. I spoke on our living document: “High-Level Environmental Sustainability Guidelines for Large Accelerator Facilities”. Also, as I was already there, I took the opportunity to present my LCA work on the ISIS-II Neutron and Muon Source via one of the poster sessions. It was all a bit of a blur really, but an absolutely fantastic experience. Even with the jet lag I managed to have many interesting discussions and conversations and made some great connections with which continue work on sustainability in research!