The Hercules 2022 session took place from 28th February to 1st April and attracted 187 applications. 72 participants were selected as full-time participants (including all hands-on trainings and the week at one of our partner facilities) while the others were offered to follow the school online as part-time participants (lectures organised in Grenoble only). In the end, 114 participants in total attended the Hercules 2022 school (68 full-time and 46 part-time) with 41 different nationalities based in 21 different countries; most of the students from Europe, and a few from India, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, and Taiwan.
The lectures, tutorials, and practicals involved more than 180 lecturers and tutors, leading specialists in the use of large scale facilities, giving a very complete training to the participants.
Due to the COVID pandemic, the 2022 school was organised fully online in Grenoble, including remote hands-on practicals and tutorials for the full-time participants, with the same amount as usual (about 40% of the course), together with virtual visits of large scale facilities and the poster session. The practicals and tutorials program in Grenoble consisted of 2 half-day tutorials with demonstration at ILL (no practicals could be organised due to the reactor shutdown), 3 (or 4) half-day practicals at ESRF that took place remotely on various beamlines, and 4 (or 3) half-day tutorials at ILL, ESRF, CNRS, CEA, and/or IBS. The full-time students were split in 4 groups during the 4th week of the school to follow additional remote training (lectures and mostly practicals) organised by our partner facilities: DESY and European XFEL for one group, SOLEIL for the 2nd group, PSI for the 3rd group, KIT for the 4th group. While the two first groups could follow this week on site, at Hamburg and near Paris, respectively, if was organised online at PSI and KIT. Remote or onsite access to practicals realised on beamlines have been also organised during this week. In total, the full-time participants attended about 80 hours of lectures, 30 hours of practicals with beam time at large scale facilities, 21 hours of tutorials, and 25 hours of other activities (visits, group work, questions on lectures, poster session).
All participants stayed online at home for the whole school (with one week onsite for 36 participants) and gave a very positive feedback, despite the online format.