AIDA-2020: First year in review
Laurent Serin, 27/05/2016
Group photo of project members attending the AIDA-2020 Kick-off meeting at CERN, June 2015 (Image: CERN)
Following the success of the AIDA project, AIDA-2020 started one year ago in May 2015. The project groups a large fraction of the High Energy Physics R&D community in Europe, united in the goal of advancing detector technology and infrastructures for the future. The community represents most forms of detector technology and is very active in its work and networking.
On Track is to serve as a newsletter for the AIDA-2020 project as well as the wider detector community. Its launch will allow the detector community at large to exchange information and results by highlighting new developments in the field and serving as an active source of news.
Over its first year, the irradiation and test beam facilities supported by the Transnational Access programme were already going full speed. In addition, new facilities such as the micro beam at RBI in Croatia and the electromagnetic compatibility testing facility at ITAINNOVA in Spain had some of their first users under this programme. There are also ongoing improvements of tracking devices at DESY and CERN or upgraded irradiations facilities at CERN and JSI.
There has been progress on each detector technology (pixels, calorimeter and gas detector) with qualification measurements, and beam tests are expected to be conducted over summer 2016, as well as dedicated meetings and tutorials on TCAD simulations.
Silicon detectors used for energy and time measurements are among the new ways investigated by the collider experiments (CMS, ATLAS, CALICE). A dedicated workshop will be organized by AIDA-2020 on June 13th at DESY, during the first annual meeting, to initiate cross-experiment interactions between these key actors.
I look forward to the first annual meeting at DESY (Hamburg, Germany) where we will be able to discuss the first year results and the activities of the coming year. After having managed AIDA and this first year of AIDA-2020 running well, it is also time for me to pass the baton to Felix Sefkow as the AIDA-2020 Scientific Coordinator. Felix will impulse new ideas for the project, and open it further to detector applications outside our field, guiding AIDA-2020 to new ventures in the years ahead.