Current Director's Corner archive
18 December 2008 - A year in the life of the ILC ...it seems appropriate to take a brief look back over a year which has certainly had its ups and downs. -- By Nick Walker
11 December 2008 - A low-energy gamma-gamma collider as a first step toward the ILC ... The spirit of new ideas that prevailed at the ICFA meeting continued into the ILCSC meeting where Hirotaka Sugawara, former director general of KEK, Japan, presented a different approach towards the ILC. He suggested building a lower-energy gamma-gamma machine as a first step towards the ILC. The ILCSC is now evaluating the pros and cons of this idea. -- By Barry Barish
4 December 2008 - Discussing the future - SLAC ICFA Seminar Visionary thinkers converged at SLAC for an ICFA Seminar (International Committee for Future Accelerators) on possible future projects for particle physics during the last week in October. -- By Barry Barish
26 November 2008 - Progress on our Technical Design Phase goals Last week several hundred scientists and engineers gathered at the new Forum Event Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago for LCWS 08 and ILC 08. Once per year the Global Design Effort hosts a plenary meeting to which the entire community is invited to hear progress, plans and general presentations, and for 2008 this meeting was ILC08. -- By Marc Ross
20 November 2008 - The legacy of Edoardo Amaldi Edoardo Amaldi was one of the giants who shaped our field... In fact, his impact on physics and society was far broader than his contributions to particle physics alone: they also include his scientific contributions and leadership in nuclear physics, gravitational wave research and astrophysics. -- By Barry Barish
13 November 2008 - Formalising the CLIC-ILC collaboration Collaboration between our ILC R&D and design work and the parallel effort towards the CLIC concept stands to be of benefit to both groups. -- By Barry Barish
6 November 2008 - The first Project Advisory Committee review ... As we move forward in the Technical Design Phase, a new review process is being developed with two principle elements: a primarily internal review process for ongoing in-depth technical reviews and an external review process for accountability and high-level reviewing. Our external reviewers who report to the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC), the Project Advisory Committee (PAC) chaired by Jean-Eudes Augustin, held their first meeting in Paris in early October and have now released their first report -- By Barry Barish
30 October 2008 - Progress in the SCRF technical area As one of Project Managers for the ILC I was been given the current task of overseeing superconducting radiofrequency technology (SCRF) in August 2007, and it may be a good time to see how our SCRF technical area could make some progress with global cooperation. -- By Akira Yamamoto
23 October 2008 - 2nd Asia ILC RD Seminar ... The ILC Global Design Effort is structured around a regional organisation, where we have regional directors, a regionally supported common fund. We rotate our more general meetings between Asian, the Americas and Europe. It is equally important that we carry out coherent regional technical programmes, and regional technical meetings are an important step in that direction. -- By Barry Barish
16 October 2008 - Progress and plans for ILC RD at JLab Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) in Newport News, Virginia is a major DoE laboratory for Nuclear Physics. The laboratory has a pioneering 6 GeV electron accelerator that is based on superconducting RF accelerating technology. -- By Barry Barish
9 October 2008 - Preparations for S1-global at the STF at KEK Research and development on superconducting radiofrequency (rf) cavities, cryomodules and operational units is at the core of our programme to develop the technologies, the best possible machine design and an implementation plan for the ILC. -- By Barry Barish
2 October 2008 - Achieving tiny beam spot sizes with ATF2 The ILC's beams pass through each accelerating element once before they are directed to collide with the beam travelling in the opposite direction. This poses the two main challenges in the ILC: to achieve a very high gradient in the accelerator in order to make it as short as possible while achieving the desired energy, and to achieve very small beam spots to maximise the probability of collisions by the crossing beams. -- By Barry Barish
25 September 2008 - It is that time of the year again (...) Given the arcane nature of the US budgetary system, I will describe this process, since the resources available to us, or the lack thereof, serve to drive the scope of the US ILC R&D effort. -- By Mike Harrison
18 September 2008 - The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge Laboratory The recently completed Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) (...) project promises to move neutron science into a new era and both the execution of the project and some key technologies are of important to our efforts towards the International Linear Collider. -- By Barry Barish
11 September 2008 - US National Science and Technology Summit The US government policy for support of science and technology is being developed around the 2007 America Competes Act , a consensus policy to strengthen long-term US economic competitiveness through science and technology. -- By Barry Barish
4 September 2008 - High Energy Physics in Philadelphia - ICHEP 08 The International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP), once affectionately called the Rochester Conference, is considered central in our field. It takes place every second year. This year the meeting was held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. -- By Barry Barish
28 August 2008 - Uniting Asian collaboration Since the establishment of Global Design Effort in 2005, I have been a member of Executive Committee as Accelerator Leader. In August 2008, I earned a new title, Asian Regional Director, taking over the job from Mitsuaki Nozaki. -- By Kaoru Yokoya
21 August 2008 - FALC meets in Rome The Funding Agencies for Large Colliders held their semi-annual meeting in Rome at INFN headquarters on 14 July 2008. The meeting was notable in that it marked the FALC release of their first annual report and the appointment of a new chairperson, Pierre Coulombe. --By Barry Barish
14 August 2008 - Spain's increasing involvement in large international science ... The modern era in Spanish particle physics was marked by Spain rejoining CERN in 1983, and the country's investments and programme in particle physics have continued to grow and thrive ever since. -- By Barry Barish
7 August 2008 - Greetings to Kaoru and thanks to Mitsuaki I am sorry to announce today that Mitsuaki Nozaki of KEK is stepping down as our Regional Director for Asia, while at the same time I am pleased to announce the appointment of Kaoru Yokoya, also of KEK, as our new Regional Director. -- By Barry Barish
31 July 2008 - New hope for Europe My last Director's Corner in January summarised the situation in Europe as far as it could be discerned through the still-settling dust after "Black December". Six months later, it is appropriate and useful to revisit the new landscape in Europe. -- By Brian Foster
24 July 2008 - ILCSC approves new MOU at the Dubna meeting The International Linear Collider Steering Committee met on 4 June 2008 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, in parallel with the first day of our Global Design Effort meeting. -- By Barry Barish
17 July 2008 - A personal tribute to Yoji Totsuka High-energy physics lost a giant in our field - and I lost a very good personal friend - when Yoji Totsuka, the former Director General of KEK, died of cancer at the age of 66 last week. I would like to pay special tribute to a great scientist and wonderful human being. -- By Barry Barish
10 July 2008 - The proposed Russian ILC site One of the most difficult and tricky issues for the Global Design Effort in carrying out our design work is how to approach the siting issue for the ILC before proposals are actually solicited for hosting the machine. Conventional facilities are a major part of the project, accounting for almost one third of the total costs. Therefore, in order to bring as much reality to our reference design as possible, we asked for and studied three "sample sites," one from each region. -- By Barry Barish
3 July 2008 - The ILC-ECFA Workshop in Warsaw From 9 to 12 June, the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, Poland, together with the Institute of Nuclear Studies hosted a workshop under the mandate of the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) to discuss the physics and detectors for a linear collider. -- By Barry Barish
26 June 2008 - Integrating ideas at Dubna At the recent Conventional Facilities and Siting Workshop in Dubna, there were four focus groups: Shallow Site, Infrastructure, Siting and Accelerator Systems. -- By Ewan Paterson
19 June 2008 - Hot off the press: Technical Design Phase ILC RD plan (...) The R&D plan outlines our strategy to advance the ILC design effort to the point where we will be ready to propose a robust construction project in a few years. -- By Barry Barish
12 June 2008 - The P5 Report and its implications for the ILC On Thursday, 29 May, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel held its spring meeting in Washington, DC. The entire meeting was devoted to the presentation and discussion of the anxiously awaited report "US Particle Physics: Scientific Opportunities: A Strategic Plan for the Next Ten Years," by the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, or P5. -- By Barry Barish
5 June 2008 - Critical electron cloud studies at Cornell Last week we reported on the beginning of our important experimental programme on electron cloud effects, using the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) accelerator at Cornell University. This is one of our highest-priority R&D goals during the ILC Technical Design Phase 1 (TDP-1) and is aimed at understanding the magnitude of the problem for the ILC positron damping rings and the effectiveness of our proposed mitigation techniques. -- By Barry Barish
29 May 2008 - Establishing an Asian science communication network ... if we want to promote the International Linear Collider, we need to initiate much broader campaign for physics or basic science in general. -- By Mitsuaki Nozaki
22 May 2008 - Common fund approved by FALC Resource Group The ILC Global Design Effort is made up primarily of in-kind R&D contributions done in the partner countries, mostly at the large laboratories that are developing the technologies and design towards a real ILC machine. Our primary mission in the GDE is to coordinate and guide this programme. -- By Barry Barish
15 May 2008 - Globalising RD The coordination of superconducting radiofrequency R&D is central to the Global Design Effort's mission of bringing the design for the ILC to the point we can make a robust proposal to our governments. -- By Barry Barish
8 May 2008 - Third International Accelerator School Recruiting and training the next generation of accelerator physicists is crucial to the future of the field. Accelerator schools play a central role in introducing potential accelerator experts to the science and in providing advanced education. -- By Barry Barish
1 May 2008 - The art of decision making - STF phase-2 cavity choice One of the more difficult problems in conducting large-scale science projects is the process of decision making. The ability to make good decisions in a timely way can be an enormous challenge and can differentiate good management from not-so-good management. -- By Barry Barish
24 April 2008 - The value of science What is your science worth? A question I have recently heard raised during many over-coffee discussions. The question is of course rhetorical: none of us can really answer it. But the fact that it is being asked at all is part of a reaction to the GDE management's policy to make the cost of the project a central focus of the Technical Design Phase. -- By Nick Walker
17 April 2008 - The GDE to meet in Russia The next general meeting for the GDE will be at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. JINR is a large international laboratory with a long history in accelerator-related science. --By Barry Barish
10 April 2008 - Implementing internal reviews for the ILC Technical Design Phase Last week, the new Accelerator Advisory Panel (AAP) was introduced in NewsLine. This week, I follow up with a description of its role and why I believe it will improve the quality of our R&D and design efforts. -- By Barry Barish
3 April 2008 - The ILC in Osaka Last week, the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Physical Society of Japan was held on the Kinki University campus in Osaka, where I participated in a special symposium dedicated to the International Linear Collider. -- By Barry Barish
27 March 2008 - The next step towards the ILC - building a truly global team It has been roughly a year since the completion of the Reference Design Report (RDR) and the creation of a project-oriented design effort. It is reasonable, therefore, to look broadly over our accomplishments and the direction in which we are heading. -- By Marc Ross
20 March 2008 - Congratulations, it's a PAC - scientific oversight for the GDE ... At their most recent meeting at DESY, the ILCSC reviewed our revised plans for the Technical Design Phase, taking into account the funding reductions from the UK and US. This important meeting established the foundation for our future work in the GDE and for the experimental community as they also enter into a new phase of their activities, calling for Expressions of Interest and Letters of Intent. -- By Barry Barish
13 March 2008 - The ILC Technical Design Phase begins at Sendai Last week the Global Design Effort held a major collaboration meeting at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan attended by more than 200 participants from both the ILC detector and accelerator efforts. -- By Barry Barish
6 March 2008 - Science at Sendai The ILC community has gathered at Sendai in Japan this week for the joint Asian Committee for Future Accelerators (ACFA) Physics and Detector Workshop and Global Design Effort meeting. The opening session of the meeting was highlighted by a forward-looking science talk by Hitoshi Murayama. -- By Barry Barish
28 February 2008 - A plug-compatible approach toward a truly efficient international collaboration It has been eight months since I joined the ILC team as a project manager. I have been learning a lot and am impressed with research and development works achieved and with the knowledge and expertise each scientist or engineer has. -- By Akira Yamamoto
21 February 2008 - Contemplating large international collaborations Lawrence Krauss, Case Western Reserve University, and Maria Spiropulu, CERN, organised a very provocative and interesting special session entitled, "Large-Scale International Collaborations and the Future of Physics." -- By Barry Barish
14 February 2008 - P5 - What goes around, comes around The initial P5 meeting took place at the beginning of February at Fermilab, and one session was entirely devoted to efforts globally and in the US towards a linear collider. -- By Barry Barish
7 February 2008 - US Budget President Bush released his budget request for the US fiscal year 2009 (FY09) earlier this week. -- By Barry Barish
31 January 2008 - Black December It looks as if last month will be classified as "Black December" as far as the ILC is concerned. -- By Brian Foster
24 January 2008 - Common fund ... I am pleased to report today that the GDE common fund for 2008 has been approved at FALC and will be fully funded internationally, including by the U.S. and U.K. and pending working out some details regarding individual contributions. -- By Barry Barish
17 January 2008 - Collective wisdom ...I said that we hoped to come up with a revised plan for the next phase of our ILC R&D programme, and I report today on our conclusions and consensus as to how we propose to redefine our plans and goals in response to the new budget constraints. -- By Barry Barish
10 January 2008 - Happy new - Gregorian - year 2008 As our year ends and we enter a new one, it is common practice to reflect on the past and dream of or plan the future. For the ILC, the year 2007 was a busy year. Some might say it was hectic, some would call it stressful or even a disaster, but certainly a lot happened. -- By Ewan Paterson