CCESepFaces43-51 16/8/06 15:07 Page 43 FACES AND PLACES LABORATORIES Philanthropist pledges $70 m to Homestake Underground Lab South Dakota governor Mike Rounds (third from right) and philanthropist T Denny Sanford (fourth from right) prepare to cut the ribbon at the official dedication of the Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory in the former Homestake gold mine. At the official dedication of the Homestake 4200 m water equivalent). In November 2005 donation in South Dakota, including major Underground Laboratory on 26 June, South the Homestake Collaboration issued a call for contributions to a children’s hospital centred Dakota resident, banker and philanthropist letters of interest from scientific at the University of South Dakota, and other T Denny Sanford created a stir by pledging collaborations that were interested in using educational and child-oriented endeavours. $70 m to help develop the multidisciplinary the interim facility. The 85 letters received His gift expands the alliance supporting the laboratory in the former Homestake gold comprised 60% proposals from earth science Sanford Underground Science and mine. The mine is one of two finalists for the and 25% from physics, with the remainder for Engineering Laboratory at Homestake US National Science Foundation effort to engineering and other uses. (SUSEL), joining the State of South Dakota, establish a Deep Underground Science and The second installment of $20 m by 2009 the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), which will be will create the Sanford Center for Science through its competitive site selection process, a national laboratory for underground Education – a 50 000 ft2 facility in the historic the Homestake Scientific Collaboration and experimentation in nuclear and particle mine buildings. The centre is intended for the international scientific community. The gift physics, astrophysics, earth sciences, elementary-school through university anticipates continued support from the state, engineering, biology and education. Planned students, as well as for developing new the NSF and the scientific community. physics experiments include searches for methods of teaching science and engineering. ● Homestake invites enquiries from potential neutrinoless double-beta decay, searches for The third installment of $15 m provides users in the international scientific dark matter, long-baseline neutrino studies, funding to drain the facility completely, to community. Additional information can be nuclear astrophysics, low-energy solar expand Homestake down to 8000 ft and obtained from www.lbl.gov/nsd/homestake neutrinos, proton-decay, supernovae develop a laboratory at 7400 ft. These or by contacting the Homestake principal neutrinos and geoneutrinos. developments will permit Homestake to host investigator, Kevin Lesko (e-mail Sanford’s gift will be in three installments. a full programme of research in physics, earth [email protected]), or the executive-director of The first installment of $35 m, in 2007 and science and engineering, as well as a world- the South Dakota Science Technology 2008, is specifically targeted for developing class education programme. Authority, Dave Snyder (e-mail infrastructure at 4850 ft (a depth of about Sanford has a history of philanthropic [email protected]). CERN Courier September 2006 43 CCESepFaces43-51 16/8/06 15:08 Page 44 FACES AND PLACES COLLABORATION ASPERA gets set to aim for the stars Representatives from 16 European national Council Strategy group, see p29) and funding agencies that are responsible for astrophysics (the European strategic planning particle astrophysics gathered at the group for astronomy, ASTRONET), and will be headquarters of the Centre national de la input, through ApPEC, to national agencies and recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris on European committees on large infrastructures 20 July for the launch of the AstroParticle (such as the European Strategy Forum on European Research Area (ASPERA) network. barriers to international coordination. It will Research Infrastructure). Coordination with This is a three-year ERA-NET activity under the define a roadmap on infrastructures and R&D, other regional roadmaps, in the US and Asia, Sixth Framework Programme of the European and will test the implementation of new will also be sought, with a view to optimal Commission (EC), with an EC contribution of European-wide procedures of common distribution of global infrastructures. 72.5 m. Its aim is to improve coherence and funding of large infrastructures and the The participants at the launch workshop coordination across European funding accompanying R&D. The further linking of agreed that ASPERA’s programme, the agencies for financing astroparticle physics. existing astroparticle physics infrastructures importance of which cannot be ASPERA has come about through the will also be explored. A common information underestimated, will be daunting and Astroparticle Physics European Coordination system (a database and a website) will be challenging, fully justifying the motto Per (ApPEC), a consortium of national funding constructed and studies on the differential aspera ad astra (“with difficulty to the stars”). agencies, the aims of which are to develop emergence of particle astrophysics in various ● At the outset, ASPERA comprises the long-term strategies, express the views of European countries will be performed. The following funding agencies: CNRS (France), European astroparticle physics in network is coordinated by CNRS. BMBF (Germany), CEA (France), FCT international forums, and establish a system In particular, the proposition for a roadmap (Portugal), FNRS (Belgium), FOM of peer-review assessment applicable to that is being prepared by ApPEC’s Peer Review (Netherlands), FWO (Belgium), INFN (Italy), projects in astroparticle physics. Committee will be examined in a series of MEC (Spain), MEYS (Czech Republic), SNF Europe is a leading worldwide player in workshops with the aim of formulating a (Switzerland), DEMOKRITOS (Germany), astroparticle physics, involving about 2000 common action plan, including common PPARC (UK), PTDESY (Germany), FECYT European scientists in some 50 laboratories. evaluation and funding schemes, for the (Spain) and VR (Sweden), together with CERN. The current programme costs almost 7100 m upcoming large infrastructures on high-energy One of its goals is to include all European a year and the cost of proposed future large neutrino, gamma-ray and cosmic-ray national agencies that have programmes in infrastructures is near 71 bn. This level of telescopes, gravitational antennas and astroparticle physics. For further information activity means that it is necessary to underground observatories for dark matter, contact Thomas Berghoefer (e-mail consolidate existing coordination among the double beta-decay, low-energy neutrinos and [email protected]). For information different projects at the European level. proton decay. These efforts surrounding the about ASPERA in general, contact the ASPERA will study funding and evaluation roadmap will also take account of similar coordination manager, Nathalie Olivier in Europe and will identify formal and legal European efforts in particle physics (the CERN (e-mail [email protected]). INDUSTRY ALICE collaboration presents awards to two Italian suppliers During the “ALICE week” held on 19–23 June periodically checks the successive releases of in Bologna, the collaboration honoured two the ALICE code and reports any violations. Italian suppliers, Istituto Trentino di Cultura The second company, MIPOT SPA, (ITC)-irst and MIPOT SPA. Cormons, has assembled silicon-strip sensors ITC-irst (Trento) Microsystems Division has with all the remaining elements necessary to produced 600 silicon double-sided sensors produce the silicon-strip modules. The silicon- with consistency in quality and reliability. strip detector is made of 1698 of these These sensors are installed in the inner modules, providing more than 2.7 million tracking system, very close to where collisions ALICE honoured two Italian industry winners. analogue detection channels. The fabrication will take place. ITC-irst was also rewarded for of the modules requires non-standard its important contribution to the offline Reasoning Systems Division has provided manufacturing, custom-made equipment and computing project for ALICE. The Automated ALICE with the RuleChecker software, which highly skilled personnel. 44 CERN Courier September 2006 CCESepFaces43-51 16/8/06 15:08 Page 45 FACES AND PLACES AWARDS CERN physicist wins Einstein Medal On 29 June CERN’s Gabriele Veneziano was awarded the prestigious Albert Einstein Medal for significant contributions to the understanding of string theory. The Albert Einstein Society in Bern gives the award to individuals whose scientific contributions relate to the work of Einstein. Former recipients include exceptional physicists such as Murray Gell-Mann in 2005, along with Stephen Hawking and Victor Weisskopf. Veneziano, a member of the CERN theory team since 1977, led the Theory Division from 1994 to 1997 and has already received many prestigious prizes for his outstanding work, including the Enrico Fermi Prize in 2005, the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics of the American Physical Society in 2004, and the Pomeranchuk Prize of Moscow’s Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in 1999. Gabriele Veneziano won the 2006 Albert Einstein Medal for his work on string theory. EPS honours