Skopik signs on as JLab's new Deputy Associate Director of Physics
by James Schultz

Dennis Skopik feels as if he's been in every church basement in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

For the past four years, the former director of the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory (SAL) at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon spent the bulk of his time drumming up grass-roots support, raising money and meeting with federal and provincial bureaucrats and politicians. His mission: to obtain support for the Canadian Light Source, or CLS, the largest scientific project to be funded in Canada.

But that work is over. Jefferson Laboratory's new deputy associate director of physics says he is ready to shift his focus to the Physics Division and help Larry Cardman, associate director for physics. Skopik's new responsibilities include oversight of the Lab¹s environmental, health and safety programs, supervision of user interactions and regular contact with the Program Advisory Committee.

He will also be working closely with other Lab managers on the planned CEBAF upgrade to 12 billion electron volts (GeV) and on efforts to reduce to three years the current five-year backlog of approved experiments. "I wasn't brought in to fix anything," Skopik says. "I think this lab is extremely well run. People by and large are satisfied with how things are done and the track record is excellent. I don¹t see any major problems. My job is to ease the burden of work on Larry and to contribute to the Lab's long term planning."

Although Skopik became an official Lab staff member on July 1, he commuted regularly to Canada to wrap up CLS-related administrative matters until October. Skopik's office still bears the marks of a move in progress: unpacked boxes sit neatly in front of his desk and his office has the sparse look of the as-yet unsettled. He is, Skopik ruefully admits, "just trying to catch up."

SAL's program was a user-based physics program similar to Jefferson Lab's, albeit at a much lower energy of 300 million electron volts, or MeV. Skopik oversaw a staff of 55. But its focus on basic nuclear physics < now changing to applied research as the CLS comes online by 2003 < brought Skopik into regular contact with peers around the world, including JLab researchers.

Skopik says that it was fortunate that the JLab opportunity presented itself at roughly the same time the Canadian government decided to redirect SAL's mission away from basic to applied physics. "It was a logical time to change jobs," he says. "My first love is nuclear physics. This opportunity came along and it was a natural thing to do. In some sense, it's like coming home."

Skopik, a cooking enthusiast who is fond of French and Italian cuisine, isn't sure he'll have much time in the next few months to prepare from-scratch gourmet meals. He will make time for one thing: enjoyment of the Newport News weather. After having spent 30 years braving frigid Canadian winters, Skopik is looking forward to the Peninsula's relatively tropical climate.

"I tell people there are 40 reasons my wife and I are here, and they all have units of minus Fahrenheit degrees behind them," he quips. "It was pretty cold in Saskatoon."

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