This spring’s Nikhef magazine DIMENSIES is all about looking forward. “We are looking ahead again,” writes director Stan Bentvelsen in his foreword to the public magazine, which is published in Dutch both in hard copy and online.
The magazine reports extensively on the work on the three major experiments at CERN in which Nikhef is closely involved. For the past two years, the large LHC accelerator has been shut down for maintenance and improvements. During that time, the ATLAS, LHCb and ALICE experiments are also being upgraded.
Nikhef specialists are also working intensively on the Virgo detector for gravitational waves in Italy, where a new laser technique is being installed for even greater precision. Mechanical parts for this were partly designed and built in Amsterdam. New components for ATLAS, LHCb and ALICE were also built or assembled in the Nikhef workshops.
In the magazine three recipients of a NWO Veni grant look ahead to the research they intend to do with the grant. And institute manager Arjen van Rijn talks about his dream of a sustainable Nikhef. “Sometimes I lie awake thinking about it,” he confesses.
DIMENSIES also focuses on the continuous modifications to Nikhef’s computer center, one of the largest in the Netherlands. Techniques are already being tested that will be able to handle even more massive data flows in the future. Nikhef researcher Samaya Nissanke (UvA) explains how, as the figurehead of her field, she strives to make science more inclusive. And how she herself was introduced to gravitational waves twenty years ago. “I literally could not sleep.”
The Dutch-language magazine Nikhef DIMENSIES is published twice a year and is intended for interested parties inside and outside science. The magazine can be downloaded as a pdf, or viewed as a browsable pdf. Single issues can be ordered from communications@nikhef.nl.