Rafael Ballabriga, a PhD student working in the Microelectronics Group at CERN on the Medipix3 project has won the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Student Paper Award. Medipix3 is the latest stage in adapting hybrid pixel detectors, developed for particle tracking at the Large Hadron Collider, for single photon counting in applications such as medical X-ray imaging. Ballabriga's prototype chip uses the latest cmOS technology to allow neighbouring pixels to pool information event-by-event, providing precise simultaneous measurements of position and energy. The award was presented at the recent IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium.

Tom Haruyama of KEK, has won the Commendation of the Research and Education Promotion Fund from the Alumni Association of Keio University Faculty of Science and Technology. It recognizes his development of a pulse-tube cryocooler for liquid-xenon particle detectors. This technology is used at CERN and is being studied for further applications in detectors.

Karlsruhe keeps strong links with CERN

On 6–8 October 40 people from the University of Karlsruhe visited CERN. Headed by the rector, Horst Hippler, they included members of the university president's office, senate and administration. After a welcome by Sigurd Lettow, chief financial officer designate at CERN, Maximillian Metzger, secretary general, and Herwig Schopper, former director-general of CERN, the group toured the Tier0 Computing Centre, the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider, and the cmS detector. Scientists and graduate students from Karlsruhe who work at CERN concluded the visit with a presentation of the cmS Tracker Integration Facility. The close relationship between CERN and Karlsruhe, initiated by Schopper more than 40 years ago, is now continued by Thomas Müller, Schopper's successor at the Institut für Experimentelle Kernphysik at Karlsruhe, and by Lettow, former co-head of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.

IDTB07, the ILC Detector Test Beam Workshop, will be held at Fermilab on 17–19 January 2007. The workshop will discuss the detector R&D programme for the International Linear Collider (ILC) in view of the need for test beams, with the opportunity to evaluate the capabilities of existing facilities. Facility managers will describe the current and future test-beam facilities and their availability. For further information see https://conferences.fnal.gov/idtb07/.

INPC2007, the 23rd International Nuclear Physics Conference, will be on 3–8 June 2007 in Tokyo. The conference will comprise plenary talks and parallel sessions and will include a special session commemorating the centennial of Heidiki Yukawa's birth, and will be open to the public. Online submission of papers for the conference will be available until 22 January. For further information about submission and registration visit www.inpc2007.jp.

The 13th Lomonosov Conference on Elementary Particle Physics will be at the Moscow State University on 23–29 August 2007. These biennial conferences bring together about 300 theorists and experimentalists from different countries to review the current status and future prospects in elementary-particle physics. The programme of the 13th conference will include neutrino physics, astroparticle physics, gravitation and cosmology, and electroweak theory. For registration (deadline 1 March 2007) see the conferences section at www.icas.ru/english/index.htm. For further information contact Alexander Studenikin, chair, e-mail studenik@srd.sinp.msu.ru or Alexander Grigoriev, conference scientific secretary, e mail ane@srd.sinp.msu.ru.

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