Barry Barish to lead design project for International Linear Collider
Barry Barish from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has been named the director of the Global Design Effort for the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC).
The announcement was made by the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) at the Linear Collider Workshop, which was held at Stanford University on 18 March. Barish is Linde Professor of Physics at Caltech and director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) laboratory.
The ILC Global Design Effort will be the focal point for coordinating the interests and involvement of accelerator scientists and particle physicists in North America, Europe and Asia. Barish will lead the hundreds of scientists worldwide who are currently working on the research and development projects required for preparing a final Technical Design Report for the ILC (CERN Courier October 2004 p5). When this report is completed, the project will be able to move towards obtaining formal approval from funding agencies.
The proposed collider has a vast set of goals. It would create high-energy particle collisions between electrons and positrons, and provide a tool to address many of the most compelling questions of the 21st century about dark matter, extra dimensions, and the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time. From its inception, the ILC would be designed, funded, managed and operated as an international scientific project.
Sissakian is named the new director of JINR
Alexei Sissakian has been elected the new director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Russia. Well known in the fields of elementary particle physics, theoretical physics and mathematical physics, and a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Sissakian is the fifth JINR director. He succeeds Vladimir Kadyshevsky, who headed the institute from 1992.
Sissakian, who has been laboratory director and vice-director at JINR, is a specialist in the field of multi-particle production. He has been an active participant in the preparation of scientific programmes and experiments at the U-70 accelerator at the Institute of High Energy Physics and at the JINR Nuclotron, as well as at CERN and Fermilab. Sissakian is also a professor at Moscow State University.
The election was held at the session of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries (CP) of the governments of the institute's member states, under the chairmanship of the head of the Russian Federation's Federal Agency for Science and Innovation, Sergey Mazurenko.
As well as appointing Sissakian as its new director, the CP also recommended the introduction of the honourary post of JINR scientific supervisor for Kadyshevsky.