As part of the UK's contribution to the ESS, which is currently under construction in Sweden, ISIS staff are engaged in delivering two instruments: Loki and Freia, and are supporting colleagues in Italy (CNR) to deliver the Vespa spectrometer. ISIS also hosts the Programme Management Office for the whole of the UK's £165m contribution to ESS, ensuring that the UK gets the most possible value from this investment. This includes carrying out the projects below and others within STFC, UKAEA and Huddersfield University. ISIS staff are also playing an important advisory role sitting on various ESS committees.

Loki is a versatile small angle neutron scattering instrument and will be amongst the few tranche of instruments operational at ESS. Many areas of the detailed design are complete and major component orders have been placed.

Freia is a liquid reflectometer and has now moved from its concept phase into detailed design. There has been significant progress on verifying the feasibility of several critical components required to implement the Freia concept.

Working with our colleagues from the CNR, Italy,​ this year has seen significant progress in the conceptual design of the Vespa spectrometer, resulting in the first tender being placed.