From October 6-11, 2015, the symposium on Vacuum Ultraviolet Free Electron Lasers (VUV FELs) in Molecular, Cluster and Surface Science: Perspectives at the Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS) was successfully held in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP). The symposium was organized by Xueming Yang (DICP) and Eckart Hasselbrink (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany). The Sino-German Scientific Center sponsored this symposium.

More than forty leading scientists from Germany, USA, and China attended the events, as well as over thirty research staff and graduate students from DICP. Twenty nine presentations were made and working groups were formed to exchange ideas and seven endstations at the DCLS were evaluated. Planning for and discussion of opportunities deriving from a second FEL – a German FEL in China (GERFEL) – was an important part of the workshop. On the final day, a number of scientific targets and first experiments from the FEL were identified. (By Ling Jiang/ Shuo Fang)