A Memorandum of Understanding was signed recently in Seoul between a CERN delegation comprising the director of research Roger Cashmore, the advisor on non-member states John Ellis, the CMS resource manager Diether Blechschmidt and Korea University president Jung Bae Kim, on behalf of Korea.
The CERN representatives and Korean project leader, Sung Park, also met Korea’s Minister of Science and Technology, and held discussions with Korean physicists and delegates from industry about the outline of plans for future R&D and the mass-production of the Forward Resistive Plate Chamber for the CMS experiment at CERN’s LHC collider.
Over the past two years, Korea has played an active role in R&D for this major CMS component. In the summer of 1998 an actual-sized prototype was built and successfully tested at CERN, followed by the construction of a second actual-sized prototype. Intensive R&D continues, which is being coordinated by the Korea Detector Laboratory (KODEL).
Thirteen other Korean institutes are associated: Cheju National University, Chonnam National University, Chungbuk National University, Dongshin National University, Kangwon National University, Konkuk, Kyungpook National University, Seonam, Seoul National University, Seoul National University of Education, Sungkyunkwan, Wonkwang and Yonsei.
The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding represents a milestone for basic science research in Korea.
