Director's Corner

5 April 2007

Barry Barish

GDE to sponsor Second International School for Linear Colliders

I am pleased to announce that the second accelerator school dedicated to linear colliders will be held from 1-10 October 2007 at Ettore Majorana Center, Erice (Sicily), Italy under the sponsorship

Poster for the 2nd International School for Linear Colliders

Students at the Sokendai Linear Collider School

of the ILC GDE, ILCSC and ICFA Beam Dynamics Panel. The demand for and the success of our first accelerator school held last year in Japan has motivated us to follow up with a second school in Europe this year, and we plan a third one in the U.S. next year. The primary focus of the school will be on the International Linear Collider (ILC), but it will also cover multi-TeV colliders, such as the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). The school is directed toward graduate students from universities around the world, postdoctoral fellows, junior researchers, and physicists interested in changing their career from experimental physics to accelerator physics. Detailed information on the school can be found online.

The first linear collider accelerator school was held from 19-27 May 2006 in Sokendai, Hayama, Japan. There was very large student interest in the first school, yielding more than 500 applicants from 44 countries. The Curriculum Committee selected a class of 74 students, representing 18 countries giving the school a truly international character. The participants uniformly praised both the quality of the lectures and the experience for the students. In response to suggestions, we have made a few improvements for our second school. While the list of lectures will be similar, we have reduced the number of lecturers, in order for the students to have more personal time with the instructors. Student evaluations will be based on a final examination, rather than from homework. We expect this will allow more time for interactions.

We are very fortunate that this year's school will be held in conjunction with the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (EMFCSC) in Erice, Sicily.

An historic photo of Antonino Zichichi in the centre with Eugene Wigner and Paul Dirac

This beautiful and unique locale is the home of many important schools and meetings. The President of EMFCSC is Professor Antonino Zichichi, who is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Bologna and past President of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics. Under Zichichi's leadership, Erice has blossomed to become a true international centre for advanced scientific scholarship, hosting an impressive array of schools covering a very wide spectrum of topics in modern science.

I have emphasised before the crucial role that accelerator schools play in educating the next generation of accelerator physicists. Few universities offer PhDs in accelerator physics, making post graduate training of this type crucial to academic learning in this field. The type of accelerator techniques under development for the ILC will have many applications in the future, and we believe there will be continuing good opportunities for accelerator physicists working in the area. I fully expect that many of the accelerator leaders of the future will emerge from our linear collider accelerator schools.

-- Barry Barish