16 November 2006
New Director for North West Accelerator Science
LIVERPOOL, UK - November 2006: The Cockcroft Institute - one of the UK's flagship centres of excellence in accelerator science - has appointed world-renowned physicist Professor Swapan Chattopadhyay as its Inaugural Director.
Professor Chattopadhyay is currently Associate Director at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in the US and renowned for breakthroughs in the physics and technology of particle beams and photon science. He will take up his new post at the Cockcroft Institute in March 2007.
He will also be appointed to the first Chair of Accelerator Physics in the UK - created jointly by the Universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester. "The creation of the Cockcroft Institute is most opportune as the world moves into gear for the challenges of particle accelerators in the 21st Century," he said. "Accelerator Science poses major new challenges for the future which will open fantastic new horizons and opportunities for science and its application and thereby for the progress of humankind globally."
The Cockcroft Institute is a new joint venture at the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus in Cheshire involving the Universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA). The Institute has been put in place with an initial investment of around £27 million, comprising £11 million from core and first project funding by PPARC, the CCLRC and the EU; £10 million from the NWDA, and £6 million from the universities.
Founding director of the Institute and Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool, John Dainton, said: "Professor Chattopadhyay is a world leader in his field and brings a superb record of distinction and leadership in Accelerator Science."
Professor Chattopadhyay is recognised for his contributions to phase space cooling, innovative particle colliders, novel synchrotron-radiation production and ultra-short femtosecond X-ray sources.
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His achievements also include the development of postgraduate education in Accelerator Physics and Engineering and a number of successful industrial collaborations with hi-tech commercial partners.
Welcoming news of the appointment, Professor Robert Aymar, Director-General of CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, said: "I look forward to significant collaboration involving the Institute and CERN in the years to come for the benefit of science in Europe and the rest of the world."
Since the construction of the first particle accelerator, physicists, accelerator scientists and engineers have continued to develop machines using new technologies enabling them to produce and deliver to experiments beams of particles of increasing energy and intensity to help us understand the physics of the Universe.
The Universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester have 28 Nobel Prize winners among their staff and former students - several of which are based on research with particle accelerators. Following the discovery of the atomic nucleus in Manchester by Lord Rutherford, Nobel Laureates John Cockcroft and Sir James Chadwick from the North West were central to the splitting of the atom and to the discovery of neutron in Cambridge.
Subsequently, after one of the first synchrotron particle accelerators was built and operated in Liverpool by Chadwick, physicists from the three universities were instrumental in the creation of the Daresbury and Rutherford laboratories and in the creation and development of CERN. All three universities, together with colleagues at Daresbury, now have groups working at the forefront of particle, nuclear, atomic and molecular physics at accelerator laboratories worldwide.
The challenges of the next generation of accelerators at the beam energy and intensity frontiers are being addressed in global collaboration. The Cockcroft Institute's aim is to provide the intellectual focus, the educational infrastructure, and the essential scientific and technological facilities for Accelerator Science and Technology research and development, thereby enabling scientists and engineers in UK research centres and industry to take major roles in such global accelerator design, construction, and operation.
At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, physicists will, in 2007, be able to collide protons "head-on" with unprecedented energy, enabling the discovery of new phenomena which may change fundamentally our understanding of the Universe.
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Notes to editors
1. The University of Liverpool www.liv.ac.uk is one of the UK"s leading research institutions. It attracts collaborative and contract research commissions from a wide range of national and international organisations valued at more than £90 million annually.
2. Lancaster University www.lancs.ac.uk has won global recognition for the quality of its research and is consistently top of national league tables for research and teaching quality. A recent £200m investment has resulted in new centres of excellence in ICT, Environment and Leadership.
3. The University of Manchester www.manchester.ac.uk is the largest higher education institution in the country, with 24 academic schools and more than 36,000 students. It is Britain"s first half billion pound university with an annual income of more than £514 million.
4. The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) www.pparc.ac.uk is the UK"s strategic science investment agency. It funds research, education and public understanding in four areas of science - particle physics, astronomy, cosmology and space science. PPARC is government funded and provides research grants and studentships to scientists in British universities, gives researchers access to world-class facilities and funds the UK membership of international bodies such as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the European Space Agency. It also contributes money for the UK telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and in Chile, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, which includes the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank observatory.
5. Daresbury Laboratory is part of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) www.cclrc.ac.uk This is one of eight UK research councils and is one of Europe"s largest multidisciplinary research organisations, supporting scientists and engineers across the world. It operates world-class, large-scale research facilities, provides strategic advice to the Government on their development and manages international research projects in support of a broad cross-section of the UK research community.
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The NWDA www.nwda.co.uk leads the economic development and regeneration of England"s Northwest and is responsible for:
• Supporting business growth and encouraging investment
• Matching skills provision to employer needs
• Creating the conditions for economic growth
• Connecting the region through effective transport and communication infrastructure
• Promoting the region's outstanding quality of life
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