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UK’s Brian Foster Appointed European Regional Director for Linear Collider’s
Global Design Effort
Joins North American, Asian Directors in global organization for proposed new
accelerator
June 20 -- Barry Barish, director of the Global Design Effort (GDE) for the
proposed International Linear Collider, announced the appointment of British
physicist Brian Foster as European regional director for the GDE. Foster will
join Barish; Gerald Dugan, North American regional director; and Fumihiko
Takasaki, regional director for Asia, to form the GDE’s Directorate.
“I am delighted that Brian Foster has agreed to become the European director for
the linear collider’s GDE,” Barish said. “His experience and energy make him
extremely well qualified to take on the challenges ahead for a global
accelerator. The regional directors are key to developing the programs and
priorities within Europe, North America and Asia that will allow us to reach the
goals we have set. We are very fortunate to have three such talented and
respected regional directors. I look forward to working very closely with all of
them as we work toward designing the new accelerator that we all hope to build.”
Richard Wade, Chief Executive of the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research
Council, the UK’s science investment agency, welcomed the appointment.
“I am extremely happy about this news,” Wade said. “Brian is an excellent
choice for the project and his appointment further underlines the important and
leading role that the UK is playing in the preparation of this exciting global
project. The establishment of two university-based Accelerator Research
Institutes in the UK and our planned participation in the Global Design Effort
are key elements of our future strategy.”
The global particle physics community has proposed to design and build an
International Linear Collider, a 40 kilometer electron-positron particle
accelerator. Together with the Large Hadron Collider now nearing completion at
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, the linear
collider would break through to a new energy scale where physicists expect to
make long-awaited discoveries. Together, physicists[BF1] say, experiments at
the LHC and the linear collider have the potential to discover new forces of
nature, find extra dimensions of space, solve the mystery of particle mass, shed
light on dark matter, and fulfill Einstein’s dream of uniting gravity with the
other forces of nature.
“The linear collider is an extraordinary project for the field of particle
physics,” Foster said. “It will be the first accelerator to be conceived and
designed as a global project from the start. Already, there are hundreds of
talented scientists and engineers at work around the world to develop the best
possible design for this groundbreaking accelerator. It is a great privilege to
assume the leadership of the European effort.”
Italian physicist Sergio Bertolucci, Vice President of INFN, the Italian
funding agency for particle and nuclear physics, and a member of the European
Linear Collider Steering Committee, praised the appointment.
“Brian Foster is a very good choice,” Bertolucci said, “because of his in-depth
knowledge of the field and his intensity. We at INFN fully support his
appointment as an important step toward reaching an early decision to build the
linear collider—a decision that will be very important for the field of particle
physics in Italy and around the world.”
Albrecht Wagner, director of the Deutsche Elektronen Synchrotron laboratory in
Hamburg, Germany, added his support.
“For the past few years Brian has been a very powerful leader of the European
Committee for Future Accelerators, ECFA,” Wagner said. “His enthusiasm,
scientific judgement and political insight will be a major asset for moving the
ILC forward, both in Europe and worldwide. As regional director, Brian can count
on the full support of DESY.”
Francois Le Diberder, deputy director in charge of particle physics of IN2P3,
the French funding agency, also welcomed Foster’s appointment.
“The choice of Brian Foster as the director for the European GDE for the linear
collider has received the warm support of the particle physics community in
Europe,” Le Diberder said. “It is a great asset for his mandate to be founded on
such a large consensus of those involved."
Last month, Barish announced the appointments of Fumihiko Takasaki of Japan’s
KEK laboratory as GDE regional director for Asia; and Gerald Dugan, professor of
physics at Cornell University, as regional director for North America.
Takasaki, head of KEK’s Linear Collider Office was a spokesperson of the Belle
collaboration at KEK. He has worked extensively in coordinating the U.S.-Japan
Collaboration in high-energy physics, a bilateral science and technology program
that has benefited many science projects in particle physics.
“Without doubt, the ILC is a world high-energy physics project of an
unprecedented scale,” Takasaki said. “It is an enormous challenge for me to work
for it. It is my great honor to be able to work with world-respected colleagues
such as Barry Barish, Brian Foster and Gerald Dugan in the GDE team. I am
looking forward to working with all who are coming together around the GDE.”
Dugan has worked on numerous collider projects and programs throughout his
career in accelerator physics. He has served as a member of the International
Linear Collider Technical Review Committee, and as chair of the Accelerator
Subcommittee of the U.S. Linear Collider Steering Group.
“I welcome Brian Foster as a colleague and a fellow member of the GDE
Directorate,” Dugan said. “I very much look forward to working with him and with
Fumihiko Takasaki on the challenge of organizing the extraordinary scientific
and technical resources in Europe, Asia and North America for the design of the
linear collider.”
Upon his appointment as regional director, Foster will step down as chair of the
European Committee for Future Accelerators, a position he has held since July
2002. He is a member of the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council,
the UK funding agency for particle physics. After receiving his graduate degree
from Oxford, Foster became a lecturer in experimental physics at the University
of Bristol, where he was appointed Professor in 1996. He led Bristol’s particle
physics group from 1992 until 2003, when he accepted an appointment as Professor
of Experimental Physics at Oxford University and a Fellowship of Balliol
College. He was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize in 1999 and
the Max Born Medal and Prize, awarded jointly by the German Physical Society and
UK Institute of Physics, in 2003. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of
the British Empire by HM Queen Elizabeth in 2003.
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