The EPICS Spring 2026 Collaboration Meeting, held from 20 to 24 April at Université Paris-Saclay (France), was attended by Lucas Maindive, a member of the Control Systems Engineering Section at IFMIF-DONES. The international event brought together leading experts in control systems for large-scale scientific infrastructures.

The EPICS framework (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System), which IFMIF-DONES will use for its control systems, is a widely adopted open-source suite of tools, libraries and applications. EPICS enables the development of real-time distributed control systems for complex facilities such as particle accelerators, telescopes and large scientific experiments.

EPICS collaboration meetings provide a key platform for knowledge exchange among developers and managers from international laboratories. During the sessions, participants shared progress, reviewed future plans and discussed improvements to existing tools, with the aim of maximising efficiency and avoiding duplication in the development of technological solutions.

The EPICS Spring 2026 Collaboration Meeting and related workshops took place at Université Paris-Saclay, starting with three days of plenary collaboration sessions, followed by two days of working group meetings and training sessions, and concluding on Friday afternoon with a technical visit to the SOLEIL synchrotron.

SOLEIL, the French synchrotron serving both the international scientific community and industry, is a large-scale research facility operated by the public institutions CNRS and CEA.

It is also worth noting that Lucas Maindive grew up in this region of France, where he first encountered particle accelerators during his childhood. That early exposure to a scientific facility inspired his career path as an engineer. “In a way, this professional trip felt like returning to my roots,” Maindive said.