The Swiss Federal Council already elected him as PSI’s new Director last November. On 1 April, Christian Rüegg took over the helm at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in difficult times. The coronavirus pandemic is also a challenge for large organisations and employers like PSI. However, PSI's unique research facilities also offer opportunities for researching the virus and thus finding ways to combat it. Rüegg reveals his plans for the future of the Institute here.

Artwork does not last forever. This is particularly true for paintings, which are appreciated for their visual appearance, but inevitably deteriorate through physical processes such as the deposition of air-borne dust and soot, oxidation, and attack by free radicals. As a result, after 50 to 100 years, a once-colourful painting that was exposed to city air may have become uniformly brown, or black, or white, and its protective varnish may have become opaque, cracked and irregular.

Freeze drying has provided us with tasty dried fruits in muesli, long-life yoghurt cultures and many other important products. For the first time, using neutron beams from the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) research neutron source, a team of scientists has now been able to show us the drying process in detail. The process engineering has thus gained a method of testing theoretical models in practice.