The 11th February, it is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Today, like every other day at the ESRF, women participate in enabling the scientific progress that takes place in our institute. Meet Isabelle, Sandrine, Marie, Anne-Lise and Blanka, five of our women engineers.
Today, their work is closely related to the Extremely Brilliant Source, or EBS, the world’s first high-energy 4th generation synchrotron under construction at the ESRF. The inside of the storage ring tunnel is unrecognisable. In the short space of time since dismantling started in January, cables and cooling circuits have been disconnected and removed, and the girders and vacuum chambers lifted out. It’s a busy scene and the hundreds of different tasks involved in the dismantling is organised with almost military precision. The woman conducting the troops is Isabelle Leconte, a job she shares with colleague Pascal Renaud.
Isabelle was originally trained in chemical engineering before specialising in vacuum and cryogenic techniques. She joined the ESRF vacuum group in 1991. After 20 years developing her skills in this area, she moved to the operation group to coordinate the maintenance works during shutdown periods and follow-up machine operation and reliability. Since October last year, she has been assigned 100% to the dismantling of EBS.
>Read more on the ESRF website
Image: Marie Spitoni prepares the alignment tools on the pre-mounted girders for EBS.
Credit: ESRF/S. Candé