Director's corner summer 2010
Despite Nikhef's stafoverleg, communicatiekoffie, Jamboree, mailings and the unsurpassable daily gossip during the Nikhef coffee & tea breaks, many of you feel they are not adequately informed about Nikhef. I hope to remedy this with a quarterly Director's corner leaflet. I also use this as an opportunity to communicate selected items I simply like to bring to your attention.
Highlights
LHC:
The rapid increase in both instantaneous and integrated luminosity of CERN's LHC is fantastic. Early July a one week shift doubled the previously existing ATLAS data-sample whereas a single fill today surpasses a full early July week! Even more impressive is the performance of the four LHC experiments as demonstrated by high data-taking efficiencies and MeV-precision reconstruction of a wealth of hadronic resonances. With first top-quark pair events observed by ATLAS (and CMS) and first B-->J/Psi Phi decays observed by LHCb, we now only need the sympathy of Nature to grant the LHC experiments their first real discoveries. I will not be picky and take whatever comes first: supersymmetry, quark-gluon plasma, 'SM-forbidden' B-decays, Higgs,...
(New) Nikhef research activities
Accelerator R&D:
As of August 12, Nikhef is an official member of the CLIC consortium aimed at the realization of a multi TeV linear e+e- collider. Together with CERN, Nikhef will develop a micrometer precision alignment system for the 20 kilometer long CLIC arms using not surprisingly RASNIK. Ask Harry v/d Graaf for the details.
Direct dark matter search:
This Spring, Nikhef joined the already running XENON100 (100 kg fiducial volume) and the still to be build XENON-1T (1000 kg fiducial volume) liquid xenon experiments deep underground the Gran Sasso mountain about 100 kilometers South-East of Rome. These experiments have a single goal: to observe the scattering of a dark matter particle on a xenon atom and hence to discover dark matter! The environmental background and detector material purity requirements are extraordinary. Patrick Decowski coordinates the Nikhef activities in this field.
Testbeam:
Many of the real detector units behind Nikhef Detector R&D group's funny acronyms (Gossip, Gridpix, Polapix, Pillarpix, Next, DICE, RELAXD, ...) were pushed to their limits in a CERN testbeam from August 12-22. Preliminary results look very promising. My only concern: what do we do when Fred Hartjes really retires?
Nikhef scientific staff
In May Dorothea Samtleben descended from the ground-based QUIET cosmic microwave background telescope in Chile at an altitude of 5080 meters above sea level to work at Nikhef (a few meters below sea level) on the deep-sea ANTARES and KM3NeT neutrino telescopes.
The Nikhef ALICE group was the last to benefit from a Nikhef hiring campaign. Marco van Leeuwen and Panos Christakoglou received an offer for a permanent and tenure track position, respectively. Whereas Raimond Snellings accepted an offer as full professor at Utrecht University. Proficiat professor Snellings.
A genuine spin-off of the ALICE hiring campaign was the FOm/v subsidy which allowed Pamela Ferrari to join the Nikhef ATLAS group as a staff physicist. Olya Igonkina moved on from a FOm/v position to a Nikhef staff position.
Nikhef technology departments
These are Nikhef's 'crown jewels'. In the computer and electronics departments it is business as usual where 'as usual' simply refers to state-of-the-art and high-tech activities. The same holds for the mechanical department, in addition this department is looking into ways to better use the available office space and is negotiating with several vendors to purchase top-of-the-line machinery to be even better equipped to confront the challenges of upcoming particle physics experiments. I am looking forward to discuss the plans for new office space and new machines with the stakeholders = colleagues from the mechanical technology department
Top priority projects:
Risking criticism I will mention two projects which I want to see move forward swiftly at all cost.
Firstly, the glamorous large spark-chambers visualizing cosmic-rays and planned for an exhibit in the NEMO science museum starting this Fall. At the same time we also hope to have a similar setup ready for the main Nikhef lobby.
Secondly, the spare thin-walled aluminum RF-boxes separating the LHCb vertex locator (VELO) from the LHC vacuum. The VELO is LHCb's key sub-detector system and performs extremely well. Without the VELO, LHCb can stop data taking and that is something I want to insure Nikhef against and the spare RF-boxes are Nikhef's insurance policy.
Nikhef 'valorization'
Like in most countries, also our government thinks that by continuous improvement of a candle you can invent the electric light bulb or even the LED. We know better. Nevertheless, also Nikhef cannot escape to pay attention to valorization (= turning scientific research into economic profit). With one of the World's largest Internet Exchanges within the walls of the Nikhef laboratory and with all non-invasive medical tools of nuclear physics origin (Roentgen, CT, NMR, PET, ...) I do not really see why Nikhef should bother, but recently another Nikhef gadget, the RASNIK alignment system, was successfully installed in the Weena tunnel in Rotterdam to monitor minute movements of the tunnel walls. This is the first product of Sensiflex B.V., a start-up which aims to make a business of RASNIK. Many more to come, stay tuned!
Rob Klöpping received a grant from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to organize from 8-11 November 2010 the Holland@CERN event. A road show featuring numerous Dutch companies at the CERN premises (main building). If you happen to be at CERN one of those days, do not hesitate to pass by the stands of our Dutch colleagues!
Outreach
Cosmic Sensation, the award winning ('Academische Jaarprijs' 2009, team Sijbrand de Jong) immersive event of music and visuals steered by cosmic radiation will take place from September 30 to October 2 in Nijmegen Park Brakkenstein, near the Radboud University. Dance adepts should certainly go to this unique event. See http://www.cosmicsensation.nl/ for detailed information.
Nikhef finances
One less glamorous but necessary occupation of many at Nikhef is to compete for subsidies to fund and thereby realize our dreams.
June 1st the 'Sectorplan Natuurkunde' was approved at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in the Hague. For Nikhef this results in several new staff positions for all (RU, UU & UvA/VU cluster) of the four universities participating in Nikhef. Moreover, Nikhef-staff members with a university affiliation can compete for earmarked temporary positions (please do so!). In addition the UvA considers astroparticle physics a priority research topic which opens funding perspectives in this exciting field of research.
The Nikhef's research school for subatomic physics was earmarked by NWO as one of the elite graduate schools in the Netherlands.
Nikhef's grid computing activities are doing extremely well. Science Park Amsterdam is the host of the European Grid Initiative (EGI) resulting in a steady influx of new researchers. For more information on EGI please watch the EGI Technical Forum 14-17 September 2010 in the Beurs van Berlage (Amsterdam). EU-subsidies were awarded to several project proposals with Nikhef participation. The prospects for the continuation of grid compute facilities in the Netherlands after the completion of the BiG Grid project in 2012 are looking better and better. And last but not least: the NL-Tier1 (jointly hosted by SARA & Nikhef) is running smoothly.
Finally, I wish to compliment all the Nikhef employees who already made and will make (again) an effort to score a grant in one of the numerous schemes available e.g.: FOM Project- & Programmaruimte; NWO Vernieuwingsimpuls; EU SIRG & ERC; STW.
Construction within and around Nikhef
Construction has positive and negative effects. In the end functionality and appearance of the Nikhef premises improve. During the process some of us suffer from noise, dust, etc. Those responsible try to offer alternatives, regretfully this is not always sufficient. I am looking forward to a completion of the many projects within and around Nikhef.
PhD students
As of 2010 Nikhef will award the best English thesis summary with the 'Jan Kluyver-prijs', this in memory of Jan Kluyver who was instrumental in setting up Nikhef as a national institute. See the Nikhef web pages for more details.
Evaluation of FOM-Nikhef by NWO
In 2011 FOM-Nikhef (only insiders really understand this) will be evaluated by a panel of international experts in our field of research. The outcome of this evaluation will impact Nikhef's future. As input material we have to deliver (amongst others) a self-evaluation document covering the 2005-2010 period and a Strategic Plan. Leo Wiggers is coordinating this effort and I count on all of you to contribute to get the best out of this event! Like we did back in 2007.
Nikhef affiliation in scientific publications:
Another factor in the evaluation is an overview and citation analysis of Nikhef's scientific publications. Surprisingly, the 'simple' counting of Nikhef's scientific publications is complicated due to the many different Nikhef affiliations we use! To remedy this:
Publications with Nikhef/FOM employees should use (please observe the commas):
Nikhef, Science Park, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Publications with only university employees should ideally also use the above affiliation in addition to the affiliation favored by their own university. This way I am sure Nikhef will again become the Dutch research institute with the highest citation score.
Frank Linde
