The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 24 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer.
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. A cyclotron accelerates charged particles outwards from the center of a flat cylindrical vacuum chamber along a spiral path. The particles are held to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying electric field. Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention.
DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure, dynamics and function of matter, and conducts a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary scientific research in four main areas: particle and high energy physics; photon science; astroparticle physics; and the development, construction and operation of particle accelerators. Its name refers to its first project, an electron synchrotron. DESY is publicly financed by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal States of Hamburg and Brandenburg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed path increases with time during the accelerating process, being synchronized to the increasing kinetic energy of the particles.
The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is a joint research facility situated in Grenoble, France, supported by 22 countries.
The Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education (CLASSE) is a particle accelerator facility located in Wilson Laboratory on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. CLASSE was formed by merging the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) and the Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) in July 2006. Nigel Lockyer is the Director of CLASSE in spring of 2023.
The Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) is an independent laboratory located in Allan in the Balqa governorate of Jordan, created under the auspices of UNESCO on 30 May 2002.
Rolf-Dieter Heuer is a German particle physicist. From 2009 to 2015 he was Director General of CERN and from 5 April 2016 to 9 April 2018 President of the German Physical Society. Since 2015 he has been Chair of the European Commission's Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, and since May 2017 he has been President of the SESAME Council.
Swapan Chattopadhyay CorrFRSE is an Indian American physicist. Chattopadhyay completed his PhD from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1982.
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle physics. Accelerators are also used as synchrotron light sources for the study of condensed matter physics. Smaller particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of applications, including particle therapy for oncological purposes, radioisotope production for medical diagnostics, ion implanters for the manufacture of semiconductors, and accelerator mass spectrometers for measurements of rare isotopes such as radiocarbon.
Hafeez Hoorani or Hafeez-ur-Rehman Hoorani or Hafeez R. Hoorani is a Pakistani particle physicist, with a specialisation in accelerator physics, and a research scientist at the CERN. Hoorani is working at the National Center for Physics, with research focus in elementary particle physics and high energy physics. Until the end of 2013, he served as scientific director of International Centre for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) and is now research associate at the National Center for Nuclear Physics, Islamabad.
Alan Astbury (1934–2014) was a Canadian physicist, emeritus professor at the University of Victoria, and director of the Tri-Universities Meson Facility (TRIUMF) laboratory.
Peter Ignaz Paul Kalmus, is a British particle physicist, and emeritus professor of physics at Queen Mary, University of London.
Peter Jenni, is an experimental particle physicist working at CERN. He is best known as one of the "founding fathers" of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider together with a few other colleagues. He acted as spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration until 2009. ATLAS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1992 involving roughly 3,000 physicists at 183 institutions in 38 countries. Jenni was directly involved in the experimental work leading to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons in the 1980s and the Higgs boson in 2012. He is (co-)author of about 1000 publications in scientific journals.
Vinod Chandrasinh Chohan was a Tanzanian-born accelerator specialist and engineer. He was a Senior Staff Member at CERN for nearly 40 years.
Amanda Weltman is a South African theoretical physicist. She is best known for co-authoring a series of papers proposing "chameleon gravity" to explain the existence of dark energy. She is currently a professor and South African Research Chair at the University of Cape Town.
Hybrid pixel detectors are a type of ionizing radiation detector consisting of an array of diodes based on semiconductor technology and their associated electronics. The term “hybrid” stems from the fact that the two main elements from which these devices are built, the semiconductor sensor and the readout chip, are manufactured independently and later electrically coupled by means of a bump-bonding process. Ionizing particles are detected as they produce electron-hole pairs through their interaction with the sensor element, usually made of doped silicon or cadmium telluride. The readout ASIC is segmented into pixels containing the necessary electronics to amplify and measure the electrical signals induced by the incoming particles in the sensor layer.
The African Light Source (AfLS) – as of May 2024 – is the initiative to build the first Pan-African synchrotron light source. The initiative is currently led – separately – by the African Light Source Foundation and the Africa Synchrotron Initiative (ASI). The aim of this initiative is to establish an advanced synchrotron light source on the African continent, generating intense beams of X-rays, ultraviolet, and infrared light for scientific research and innovation.
Faïrouz Malek also known as Faïrouz Ohlsson-Malek is a French and Algerian physicist specializing in nuclear physics, particle physics and cosmology. A research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, she is involved in international research at the CERN LHC. She has contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson. She is also known for her commitment to gender parity in science, as well as to the development of science in Africa. She is fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. She is the niece of Algerian composer Ahmed Malek.
