National and international cooperation is the theme of the latest issue of Nikhef magazine DIMENSIONS. “In doing so, we emphatically want to make a difference,” says director Stan Bentvelsen in his foreword.
Nationally, Nikhef is a collaboration of researchers in subatomic physics at six universities, enabling them to play a stronger role internationally. The just-published Nikhef Strategy 2023-2028 emphasizes the value of strong input into collaborations.
Included in DIMENSIONS is an interview with Marco van Leeuwen, Nikhef physicist who plays a leading role in the ALICE experiment at CERN as a spokesperson. Nikhef is also taking substantial responsibility in the repair of the LHCb experiment in Geneva that was damaged earlier this year; new components are being rapidly milled in the workshop in Amsterdam.
Next year CERN celebrates its seventieth anniversary. The Dutch were involved from the very beginning in the lab for peaceful atomic research, which has remained close ever since. A salient detail is that it was even briefly considered to build CERN around the Veluwe.
In the series of group portraits of Nikhef partners, this time the researchers at Maastricht University, working on both particles and gravity wave measurement techniques. So that a future Einstein Telescope is already in the region’s DNA.
DIMENSIES appears twice a year, in Dutch. The newest edition can be read online as a browsable pdf (see below) and as a download-version. The previous editions of the magazine can be found online. Previous print editions can be ordered through communications@nikhef.nl.