AIDA-2020 Fourth Annual Meeting focuses on the future of the collaboration
Daniela Antonio, 01/07/2019
Group photo of the AIDA-2020 4th Annual Meeting participants. (Image: AIDA-2020)
Participants of the AIDA-2020 project came together in St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, from 2 to 5 April 2019 for the 4th AIDA-2020 Annual Meeting. The approval of the project’s 12-month extension and the forthcoming call for an H2020 Innovation Pilot on detectors at accelerators were in focus, as participants of AIDA-2020 take stock and prepare for future collaborations. The AIDA-2020 Topical Workshop on the Future of Tracking preceded the event, on 1-2 April 2019.
AIDA-2020, a H2020 project coordinated by CERN with an EC contribution of 10 million euros, brings together leading European research infrastructures for the development and testing of detectors at accelerators. A number of partner institutes, universities, and technological centres provide the necessary expertise, in total 38 beneficiaries and 20 collaborating institutes. These institutions gather once a year for an in-depth status update and strategic planning for the upcoming year.
In the project’s fourth annual meeting, the week started with 24 parallel sessions, where Work Package and Task leaders had the opportunity to introduce the main developments of the past year to the Scientific Advisory Panel, as well as propose their plans for the fifth year of the projects and reflect on goals for the future of the community. The main highlights would later be presented during the plenary session on Thursday afternoon, chaired by the project coordinator Felix Sefkow.
Thursday and Friday started with plenary sessions, where all participants came together for an overview of the project. Daniela Bortoletto, as a representative of the Local Organising Committee, opened the session with a welcome to all participants. “Hosting the AIDA-2020 meeting in these uncertain times for international policy was especially meaningful,” Daniela affirmed. “The project’s success in collaboration has fostered incredible progress in the development of novel detectors and in the establishment of a coherent detector R&D strategy for Particle Physics in Europe.”
Felix Sefkow, the AIDA-2020 project coordinator gave a project’s status report, with the project being well on its way to deliver all expected results before the end of its fifth year. “Regardless of the approved extension, the project is keeping its momentum and achieves, in many cases over-achieves its goals,” he detailed. “Essentially all milestones and 80% of the deliverables have a green checkmark, and a higher number of publications has been reached in most categories.”
The AIDA-2020 project coordinator also introduced the main challenges that should guide the elaboration of a potential proposal for the upcoming Innovation Pilot directed at advanced communities in the domain of detector technology at accelerators, such as the AIDA-2020 community.
The subsequent presentations highlighted the main developments of Year 4 of AIDA-2020, such as the software developments for high-energy physics, tools developed for detector testing; and improvements made on cryogenic detectors, resistive plate chambers, calorimeters, and overall for test beam infrastructures. WP2 presented the main results of the Proof-of-Concept; and the Transnational Access Work Packages highlighted their activities in supporting the evaluation of detector technologies on radiation hardness, particle response and electromagnetic interference.
For the future, most of the works proposed refer to the continuation of these developments. To support the project’s teams in this effort, WP2 proposed to create value propositions for each Work Package that could eventually lead to collaborations with Industry.
These collaborations would be especially beneficial in supporting and building up the community’s proposal to the Innovation Pilot, which should be submitted by March 2020. Interested institutes and laboratories are invited to submit their Expressions of Interest (EoI) for future detector R&D activities by 15 July 2019. In case of success, these activities could lead to a follow-up to AIDA-2020.
At the end of a week of work, the Scientific Advisory Panel praised the progress and accomplishments reported by all groups and the AIDA-2020 contributions to the high-luminosity LHC projects. The SAP also pointed out the flagship nature of Transnational Access programme, and the success of the Proof-of-Concept, in terms of both results and partnerships built. They concluded with the expectation that the fifth year of AIDA-2020 will provide an opportunity to strengthen the impact of the project.
The annual meeting ended with a Governing Board meeting, where some changes in the consortium and the redistribution of unspent EC funding at the end of the project were voted and approved.
In April of 2020, participants will meet for the final AIDA-2020 annual meeting, potentially at CERN in Switzerland, for a final assessment of the projects’ results and impact. “Until then, AIDA-2020 will face a transition phase,” Felix Sefkow explains. “With more and more goals achieved, the community will increasingly direct their focus to the preparation of a follow-up project, addressing new challenges and fascinating opportunities for the accelerator projects at the horizon of European particle physics.”
AIDA-2020 Topical Workshop on the Future of Tracking
The AIDA-2020 Topical Workshop on the Future of Tracking preceded the 4th AIDA-2020 Annual Meeting, having taken place on 1-2 April 2019. The event was organised with the goal of bringing together different detector communities to address the near future of research and development for detectors. Sixty participants attended a series of lectures by different experts from different companies and institutes involved in the field.
The lectures focused on advancements to CMOS sensors, 4-dimensional tracking – specifically how to improve time stamping in particle tracking – and cooling of the numerous parts that constitute a detector. These topics are expected determine the next decade of research, according to the chair of the Scientific Commitee Iván Vila Álvarez, who also coordinates AIDA-2020 WP7 – Advanced hybrid pixel detectors. He explained: “To detect particles in a progressively harsher environment, with higher radiation levels and detector occupancy, we need better, more precise instruments, and they need to fit into the larger detector system. Workshops like the ‘Future of Tracking’ enable us to define these instruments, by identifying and addressing current challenges.”
For this reason, a considerate amount of time was allowed for questions and discussion during the workshop. These meetings between experts from different detector communities allow researchers to identify the necessary trade-offs, as Vila Álvarez puts it, for the detector to excel as a whole. The community might – for example – compromise an electronics system that does optimal time stamping, for a more resistant component that would still return excellent results. “The parts have to work as a whole. The detailed understanding of the cooling system performance is fundamental to design efficient electronics, for example.”