Alexandra Schmidli

Alexandra Schmidli works as an External Relations Officer at ESS. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Political Science and Philosophy, she moved to Berlin, where she worked for an international PR agency implementing communications campaigns for the European Commission specifically for DG Enlargement, the EU Delegation in Iceland and the Representation of the EC in the Czech Republic. Since 2013, Alexandra has been working with the Communications and External Relations division at ESS, supporting the partner and stakeholder management.

- I’ve been involved in BrightnESS since the beginning and contributed to the writing of the grant proposal. As the project began, I supported the implementation of the communication and outreach activities. Since autumn 2015, I became responsible for the coordination of all visits to ESS, setting up a procedure and managing the implementation of visits. I work with people throughout the entire organisation, with staff at the construction site as well as external partners and visitors. I handle everything from the initial request, coordination of speakers and guiding guests on site, followed by documenting and reporting about the visits. Furthermore, I work in close collaboration with our Central, Iberian and Gallia BrightnESS Communications Hub Managers to organise communication activities with them, such as for example press trips, articles, social media content and reports, among other things.

I enjoy working and meeting different people from a broad range of backgrounds. My work with visits connects me with people throughout the ESS organisation that I would not necessarily interact with. These interactions have helped me learn more about the ESS and the science behind it all. In particular, being able to show people the ESS construction site first hand has given me insight on a whole other level, not just about ESS but about people in general. It is difficult not to share the excitement that surrounds a project like ESS.

A specific challenge will be to capture the many things that are happening within the project and giving everyone’s work the visibility it deserves. One of the main objectives of our communications and dissemination task is to highlight the achieved milestones within BrightnESS in order to demonstrate to our partners and stakeholders but also the general public that the efforts are contributing to the overall progress of ESS.

The main function of BrightnESS is to support ESS during its construction and initial operations phase. In doing so BrightnESS will push developments in the field of detectors and software forward, while establishing a network for the exchange of knowledge and sharing of experiences to benefit the community around ESS and similar research facilities.