Prof. Chang Kee Jung Wins American Physical Society’s 2022 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize

Chang Kee Jung distinguished professor, the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, and a former co-spokesperson of T2K has been selected to receive the American Physical Society’s 2022 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize for his outstanding contributions and leadership in experimental neutrino physics, and for outstanding teaching and outreach, especially on the physics of sports. Prof. Jung founded the Neutrino and Nucleon Decay group at Stony Brook University in the 1990s and since then has played important roles in the neutrino experiments in Japan, such as SK, K2K and T2K.

Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Dr. Sara Bolognesi won the EPS Emmy Noether Distinction for Women in Physics

Dr. Sara Bolognesi has been awarded the Summer 2021 Emmy Noether Distinction of the European Physical Society “For her development of the data analysis techniques that conclusively improved the sensitivity of the CERN-CMS experiment, thus allowing the discovery of the Higgs boson and the first measurement of its spin and parity.” Dr. Sara Bolognesi is member of the Institut de Recherche sur les lois Fondamentales de l’Univers – Institute of Research on the Fundamental laws of the Universe of the CEA (IRFU) – Commissariat aux Energies Atomiques et Alternatives (CEA), Saclay, France. 

Dr. Sara Bolognesi joined the T2K experiment in 2013 making instrumental contributions that lead to the first indication of possible CP violation in leptons in 2020. Dr. Sara Bolognesi is now the physics coordinator of the experiment. 

Prof Federico Sanchez from the University of Geneva re-elected International Co-Spokesperson of the T2K collaboration

Prof Federico Sanchez from the University of Geneva has been re-elected International Co-Spokesperson of the T2K collaboration for a second term.

Dr. Chris J. Densham, innovator of neutrino production targets, wins the Institute of Physics Prize for Outstanding Professional Contributions

Dr. Chris J. Densham at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the United Kingdom, who has been designing and developing the neutrino production target, beam window, and other components at the J-PARC neutrino facility, wins the 2021 Institute of Physics Prize for Outstanding Professional Contributions to accelerator science and technology.

At high-energy accelerator facilities like J-PARC, a high-intensity proton beam from an accelerator strikes a target to produce particles such as neutrinos, muons, etc. The target is exposed to severe heating and pressure shock waves caused by beam bombardment, and further suffers degradation of materials due to radiation damage. Dr. Densham, as the leader of the high-power target group at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom, organizes distinguished engineers, and has made pioneering contributions to the development of targets for the world’s forefront high-energy experiments. The T2K long-baseline neutrino experiment at J-PARC is one of them, in which Dr. Densham participated as the core engineer from the outset. Without Dr. Densham’s advanced engineering expertise and interdisciplinary approach, including nuclear and fusion materials research, the design and development of major in-beam equipment, including the neutrino production target with its remote exchange system, the primary proton beam window, the baffle collimator, and the beam dump hadron absorber, would never have been accomplished. Also, Dr. Densham was one of the first to recognize the importance of the development of materials to withstand high-intensity beam exposure as the key to realizing next generation accelerator operation, and promoted to establish the RaDIATE (Radiation Damage In Accelerator Target Environments) international collaboration for this purpose, along with engineers and scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Facility, United States, and other institutes.

Further success by his team on development of targets and beam windows to tolerate higher beam power is greatly anticipated, and is actually indispensable to open the way to the next generation neutrino oscillation experiments, Hyper-Kamiokande with J-PARC in Japan and DUNE in the United States. Congratulations – Omedetou – Dr. Chris Densham.