Sira Cordon

Sira Cordon is the Press Officer at ESS Bilbao. She has a Journalism degree by the Universidad Complutense of Madrid and a Master of Business Communication (MBC). As leader of the Internal and External Relations at ESS Bilbao, Sira’s responsibilities include the implementation of the full communication strategy. Sira has more than 20 years of experience in managing communication in large projects and institutional relations. She worked for 15 years as an Account Director in Grayling (PR Consultancy) in Madrid where she was in charge of the Health Care and Scientific department; Crisis & Risk Management division and leaded the Spokesperson team.

- I work as a Hub Coordinator in Work Package 6 of BrightnESS. My daily work includes many communication activities to raise awareness about ESS project. I joined ESS Bilbao in 2008 as a Press Officer, so it was natural for me to take on the role as Hub Coordinator to communicate and disseminate the progress and results of BrightnESS.

In the Spanish media, there is not much focus on research and science. My main tasks are therefore focused on communicating the social impact of ESS through media relations with local and national media and outreach to politicians and industry. Academia is also an important target group for us. There are not that many neutron users in Spain, therefore we participate in events like the Spanish Neutron Association Meeting in Bilbao last year.

Spain is still an observer country to the ESS. I therefore work to involve our owners, the Spanish and Basque governments, in order to make them aware of the necessity of Spain becoming a full ESS member. This is done by a lot of public affairs work and activities.

I really like the sharing of experiences that BrightnESS brings, by working with the other project partners. My philosophy for communication is think globally but act locally. In BrightnESS, the WP6 Hub Coordinators meet regularly to share knowledge and discuss synergies, but the individual Hubs work according to the level of knowledge that their countries and regions have of neutron science.  

My main challenge is to ensure that all the Spanish Target groups are fully aware of the benefits of ESS - media, politicians, companies and academia. In the end, the overall objective is to gain the trust of future users.