American-Made SRF Cavity Makes the Grade

JLab's Rongli Geng and Fermilab's Jim Follkie stop for a photo in the SRF Electro-Polishing Lab. The milestone achieving cavity, AES8, is sitting in the left foreground

Jefferson Lab marked a step forward in the field of advanced particle accelerator technology with the successful test of the first U.S.-built superconducting radiofrequency niobium cavity to meet the exacting specifications of the proposed International Linear Collider.
 
The cavity was developed as part of a DOE-funded R&D effort focused on developing technologies that would be required for an ILC, a proposed next-generation electron-positron collider that would enable scientists to explore matter at higher levels of energy.

Superconducting radiofrequency accelerator cavities are crucial components of particle accelerators or colliders, harnessing the energy that the collider pumps into a beam of particles. If it were built, the ILC would require about 16,000 niobium cavities, and vendors worldwide are vying to produce test cavities that meet the ILC's stringent performance goals. Superconducting cavities are also found in a number of accelerator facilities supporting Office of Science programs, and improved performance will benefit these programs as well.

"This is the first cavity built and processed in the U.S. that exceeds the ILC gradient specification established by the ILC Global Design Effort," said Rongli Geng, a staff scientist at Jefferson Lab and group leader of the Global Design Effort Cavity Group.

The cavity was manufactured by Advanced Energy Systems, Inc., located in Medford, NY, one of several North American companies attempting to manufacture test cavities for the ILC. The cavity was processed, underwent final assembly and was tested at Jefferson Lab.

During the test, the cavity was cooled to operating temperature (2 Kelvin or negative 456 degrees Fahrenheit) and its ability to harness radiofrequency energy was gauged. The test revealed that the cavity's accelerating gradient, its ability to impart energy to particles, was 41 megavolts per meter, far exceeding the GDE specification of 35 MV/m. The test was confirmed the following day with an independent measurement.

The cavity is owned by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and is slated for installation in a cryomodule, which will be assembled at Fermilab. Dubbed AES8, it is the eighth ILC cavity built by AES to be tested by JLab and the first to surpass specification. Another cavity, AES9, tested shortly before AES8, performed just shy of the specification, topping out at 34 MV/m.

"It is a major ILC superconducting RF milestone and it is good news for JLab, for AES, for the Department of Energy and for Fermilab," Geng said. "We believe an improvement in cavity treatment for material property optimization specific to AES cavities may have been responsible for these remarkable results.  This is the fruit of the new temperature-mapping and the optical-inspection tools we introduced into the process about a year ago under the guidance of ILC GDE project managers."

Using these tools, Geng and his team have been trying to understand performance limits in ILC cavities. They found that new AES built cavities already had high-quality electron beam welded joints. That allowed the researchers to then look at cavity performance-limiting factors beyond processing and fabrication.

For instance, cavities require heat treatment to remove hydrogen from the cavities' material. Instead of following the old Jefferson Lab formula of baking a cavity for 10 hours at 600 degrees Celsius, AES8 and AES9 were baked for two hours at 800 degrees Celsius (1472 degrees Fahrenheit).

"Somehow AES-built cavities appear to be stiffer, we changed the treatment temperature primarily for optimizing its mechanical properties," Geng explained. "Now, it seems that there might have been other material property improvement."

In addition, AES8 was also subjected to an extra cleaning step called buffered chemical polish, where the cavity was exposed to a mixture of nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid and phosphoric acid. Geng said a more uniform starting surface was produced before the main surface treatment.

"We will follow this path of success and treat the next two cavities with this procedure," Geng said. "I anticipate favorable results will follow shortly and AES will soon be regarded as a high-quality source for ILC superconducting RF cavities."

Tony Favale, CEO and a director of AES, said that conducting vigorous scientific testing and incorporating improvements that boost cavity performance will help his and other companies reliably produce accelerator cavities that meet specifications.

"It's always the partnership between labs and industry that makes benefits for both," Favale said.

Funding for testing the niobium cavity was provided by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Ciovati Honored with Presidential Early Career Award

Gianluigi Ciovati

In the fall, Gianluigi (Gigi) Ciovati will visit the White House to receive a 2009 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers who are early in their independent research careers.

In addition to a citation and a plaque, each PECASE winner receives up to five years of funding from their agency to advance his or her research. This year, 100 young scientists and engineers were chosen for the honor, with 12 researchers from the Department of Energy.

For Ciovati, the work that led him to that moment began at INFN-Milan (Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics), where, with a graduate degree, he helped design accelerator cavities for a European accelerator designed to transmute nuclear waste into safer materials. The accelerator was designed, much like CEBAF, to use superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) accelerator cavity technology. From there, Ciovati moved on to the design of SRF accelerator cavities for other projects, including the Spallation Neutron Source.

"Our design was the final choice for the SNS," Ciovati said. "And then it was also decided that the SNS superconducting linac was going to be built at Jefferson Lab. So, during those times, Peter Kneisel came to visit the lab in Milano and I was introduced to him."

Ciovati moved to Jefferson Lab to work on the SNS project and soon also began work on his Ph.D. at Old Dominion University. While at ODU, he continued to work at Jefferson Lab part time.

"I worked on the design of one of the two types of cavities proposed for the CEBAF upgrade. Then I worked on the prototyping," he said. Ciovati earned his Ph.D. from ODU in 2005.

Since coming to Jefferson Lab, one aspect of SRF cavity performance has particularly intrigued Ciovati: Why do cavities fail due to a condition known as Q-drop?

"The easiest way you can think about it is with a pendulum. The Q tells you how long it will take for a pendulum, once you set it in motion, to stop. So the more efficient it is, the longer it's going to oscillate," Ciovati explained.

An accelerator cavity is a resonator. By ringing like a bell, it stores the energy pumped into it, which can then be absorbed by a charged-particle beam, thus accelerating it. When a cavity is experiencing Q-drop, it reaches a limit in its efficiency for storing energy. In such a cavity, a threshold is reached, where the more energy that is forced into the cavity, the more that is dissipated in the cavity wall and, therefore, the less that is available to be transferred to the beam.

"And there is a kind of empirical method to try to alleviate that, but it doesn't always work. And so my work has been to devise some models to try to test and identify what are the causes of this Q-drop, and eventually how to resolve it," Ciovati explained.

His current line of research focuses on magnetic vortices inside the niobium metal skin of the cavities. These vortices are like little swirls of magnetic field that can interfere with the energy being pumped into the cavity.

In one line of research, in collaboration with Ganapati Myneni at JLab and North Carolina State University, he is studying how to prevent these vortices from being trapped near the inner surface of the niobium cavity. Currently, the magnetic vortices are thought to be trapped in contaminants, such as hydrogen and oxygen clusters, sitting just under the surface of the niobium metal that has undergone standard cavity processing.

There is a potential for trapping the vortices any time the metal is cooled below the superconducting critical temperature in the presence of a residual magnetic field (such as the Earth’s magnetic field) or when there is a large range of temperatures along the cavity.

A high-temperature heat treatment in a vacuum furnace is already part of the standard cavity processing procedure to reduce the amount of hydrogen in niobium. But impurities can also be introduced through this process.

"We think that the key point is that when the furnace cools down, niobium is a very good getter for these kinds of impurities. So, there are residual gases that are left in the furnace, such as hydrogen and oxygen that will eventually be re-absorbed on the surface," he said.

To find out, Ciovati aims to build a "clean furnace," where he can control the gases inside the furnace as the niobium cools down.

"So, the idea is that, if you were to admit low partial pressure of nitrogen at the proper temperature for the proper pressure and time, you will be able to form a thin layer of niobium nitride, which would prevent the re-absorption of those other gases. The point is to make it thin enough where it doesn't disturb much of the superconducting properties of the niobium."

The other focus of his research, the fruit of a collaboration with Alex Gurevich at Florida State University, is to try to stamp out vortices already present in niobium accelerator cavities. The vortices show up in accelerating tests as hot spots on the cavities' cold, superconducting surface. Ciovati thinks that the vortices, and those tell-tale hotspots, might be chased away from the cavity's surface by a laser.

"Our idea is to try to definitely prove that by shining a laser on the spot where we see these additional losses and use the laser as what we call a thermal broom. It's going to push them deeper in the material," he said.

Ciovati said that his work could potentially benefit many accelerator projects, including the 12 GeV Upgrade project at Jefferson Lab.

"For the cavities for the CEBAF upgrade, there is one already observed kind of roll off of the Q close to the operating point. This is close to the onset of the corresponding magnetic field where this Q-drop occurs. And if a suitable remedy for it would be devised, it would help CEBAF."

By Kandice Carter
Science writer

Empty Space in CEBAF Helps Make Upgrade Possible

The empty space in the CEBAF linear accelerator sections will be filled with 10 new cryomodules as part of the 12 GeV Upgrade, doubling the energy of JLab's electron beam from 6 Giga-electron Volts to 12 GeV.

Jefferson Lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility is set to undergo its first major upgrade, a $310 million project to enhance the facility's research capabilities. To make it possible, designers are filling in "extra space" in the linear accelerators or straight sections of the machine with additional accelerator components.

But where did that extra space come from?

According to Andrew Hutton, associate director of the Accelerator Division, the space is the result of a trade-off made nearly 25 years ago when the accelerator was being constructed.

"Somewhere along the way, which is often the case in a construction project, money started to become tight," Hutton says.

So, scientists explored ways to cut costs. One idea called for using fewer accelerating components, called cryomodules, in the machine. At that time, cryomodules cost around $1 million each. They contain the equipment that "accelerate" the electrons, essentially giving them more energy.

The accelerator design then under construction called for sending the electrons through the two linear sections of cryomodules up to four times: a four-pass machine. But to use fewer cryomodules, it was suggested that an additional row of bending magnets be added, making the accelerator a five-pass machine.

Bending magnets are required because of the accelerator’s racetrack-shape. The powerful magnets bend the paths of the electrons as they pass through the turns, or arcs.

"After detailed cost and technical analyses, it was found that five-pass would be a cheaper option. But by then, the tunnel contract had already been let and the footprint of the racetrack defined," Hutton explained.

Consequently, the accelerator tunnel was built to the longer, four-pass specifications, and an additional row of bending magnets was added to each arc. That serendipitous outcome now makes possible the machine's next incarnation with the installation of 10 new high-performance cryomodules.

"This additional space, which was for many years sitting there with no real reason, became the defining way of moving to 12 GeV," Hutton said.

For more information on the 12 GeV Upgrade, visit: http://www.jlab.org/12GeV/public.html

By Kandice Carter
Science writer

BEAMS: JLab’s Science, Math Outreach Program
Needs Your Help

BEAMS students learn about energy transfer, insulators and scientific procedure during the Cold Stuff activity.

Becoming Enthusiastic About Math and Science, or BEAMS, Jefferson Lab's long-running math and science enrichment program needs your help. Staff, users and students interested in assisting with student activities conducted at the lab during normal business hours are encouraged to contact LaChelle Williams, Science Education.

BEAMS supports Newport News inner-city public school students as they progress from sixth through eighth grade. Nearly 1,500 students and their teachers visit JLab between two and five days each school year to participate in science and math activities conducted by scientists, engineers, technicians and administrators. Volunteers spend about 75 minutes in a BEAMS classroom (VARC 72A & 72B), either leading an activity or assisting students as they carry out an activity.

Volunteers are also needed to provide 15-minute Role Model visits in their office or other appropriate work area for the students. "If you aren't available for a longer activity, Role Model visits are a great way to help out," Williams notes.

The 2009-2010 round of BEAMS class visits begin in early October and will run through May 2010.

Usually two classes attend at a time and participate in two to four separate activities during each day-long visit. Volunteers are currently needed to lead or help with the following activities:
• Go-Far Cars: Determine how the height of an inclined ramp (potential energy) impacts the distance a model car travels.
• Hot Stuff: Study how heat (energy) transfer works and test materials for their heat absorption or reflecting capabilities.
• Ultra-Violet Detectives: Learn about ultra-violet light and make your own UV detector key chain.
• Cold Stuff: Study how heat (energy) transfer works and test materials for their insulation capabilities.

Later in the school year volunteers will be needed to lead or help with these and other activities:
• Hurricanes: Learn how hurricane strength is measured and use longitude and latitude readings to track a storm's path on a grid map.
• Thermometers: Learn how to measure temperature changes and build a thermometer.
• Solar System: Learn about the solar system and build a scale model of the solar system.

"JLab staff, students and users are critical to the success of JLab's science education programs, especially BEAMS," Williams says. "Our BEAMS volunteers have been sharing their passion and excitement for math, science and technology with students for more than 17 years. Students get to learn about you and your job and you get to have fun working with lots of smiling faces. Everybody wins!

"From right here at the lab, you have a chance to make a difference in the lives of these students. We're always happy to welcome back volunteers who have helped in the past, and we are eager to welcome first-time volunteers," she adds.

"Want to help, but not sure how? That's what we're here for," Williams explains. "Science Education staff will provide the training you need. Members of the Education group are happy to go over any activity whether you are new to the program or if you'd like a refresher. If you want to observe a classroom activity to see if it's something you want to do, we can schedule that."

For additional information, class visit schedules and activity opportunities, contact Williams at ext. 7567 or email lachelle@jlab.org.

The program's goals include: motivating students to boost their learning; strengthening students' math and science skills with hands-on activities, and having them interact with individuals who use math and/or science in their daily work environment. BEAMS also provides teachers with classroom activities based on JLab science and technology.

You may view several of the activities' work sheets at the following pdf links:
Cold Stuff: http://education.jlab.org/cold_stuff.pdf
Go Far Cars: http://education.jlab.org/go_far_cars.pdf
Hot Stuff: http://education.jlab.org/hot_stuff.pdf
UV Detective: http://education.jlab.org/ultraviolet.pdf
Solar System: http://education.jlab.org/solar_system.pdf
Thermometers: http://education.jlab.org/thermometers.pdf
Hurricanes: http://education.jlab.org/hurricane.pdf

FIRST Robots Come to Life
A national robot contest brings out the creativity of Jefferson Lab CAD designers and engineers

JLab Staffer Ed Daly looks on as Andrew Adderley (left) and Chris Aymonin (right) choose pictures to submit with the CAD drawing.

Most days, you'll find Jim Henry carefully moving his mouse with one hand while tapping the keyboard with the other. As a senior mechanical designer, it's his job to produce 3-D computer-aided designs of the many pieces used to build accelerators and fit them together to show how the complex systems are built.

But this past winter, Henry and fellow engineers Brian Carpenter and Ed Daly put aside their Jefferson Lab tasks for a few evenings and Saturdays to help three students from Tabb High School develop CAD drawings of a robot their team entered into the FIRST competition. The teens were among the roughly 40 members of Team 122.

Daly and Henry were invited to help with the team by Carpenter. Carpenter's role on the team included helping with fabrication and mechanical assembly of the robot. He also traveled with the team to competitions.

The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition is billed as a varsity sport for the mind. Teams of high schoolers from across the nation learn about engineering and science as they spend six weeks building robots from a common kit of parts to compete at diverse tasks. This year's task involved manipulating moon rock-like nine-inch balls.

Lucas Thomeer puts finishing touches on the robot CAD design with help from JLab Staffer Jim Henry.

"You had to be able to pick those balls up, store them in your robot, drive it over to other people's robots and dump them into their towed trailers. That was the goal," Daly explained.

Each match lasted two minutes and 15 seconds with six robots participating during a given match, three per side. And to make the contest more interesting, the organizers threw in an additional hurdle for the robots to overcome.

"The robots had to function on a low-friction surface. It's a hard-wheeled robot on a slippery surface," Henry clarified.

The teams can also enter a secondary phase of the competition, where they submit a CAD drawing of their finished robot. This aspect of the competition is what drew Carpenter, Henry and Daly to join other scientist and engineer mentors on Team 122, also called the NASA Knights, at the New Horizons Regional Education Center. The team has members from high schools throughout the area.

The three team members who worked on the CAD drawing of the robot spent a few meetings beginning in October getting to know their mentors and learning the software.

"The software, AutoCad Inventor, is provided for free by Autodesk. We did a new CAD model, and we learned the CAD software as a group," says Henry, who uses a different package for his modeling at Jefferson Lab.

The 2009 game, called Lunacy, was played with two Alliances, one red and one blue, composed of three teams each. The object of the game was to place the nine-inch game balls into trailers hitched to the opposing robots in a match lasting just two minutes and 15 seconds.

The team was slowed a bit by the design of the robot, which only began coming together in the third of the six weeks allotted for the competition. The students, Lucas Thomeer, Andrew Adderley and Chris Aymonin, kept track of the evolving design of the robot.

"It was their responsibility to take photos and make sketches of what was being done in the lab, and then come to us and turn those sketches into 3-D representations of the real hardware," Daly says.

"The last three weeks we kind of pushed it – meeting once a week, then twice a week and some Saturdays," Henry says.

The team submitted its CAD models when the robot competed in its first competition in Washington, D.C., February 25-26. In that competition, the NASA Knights won a Judges Award for assisting other teams in their matches. They didn't place in any of the other competitions they attended.

Meanwhile, the three-member CAD team sat back to await their results, which were finally made public in April. While their model didn't place in the CAD competition in which about 100 teams submitted entries, Henry says he's eager to begin the process again in the fall.

"This was our first attempt. The second attempt, we're that much ahead of the game for next year," he said. The prospects for the 2009-10 school year are good since Andrew Chris and Lucas are rising seniors and plan to apply what they learned this past season. They may even recruit a few younger members to build team continuity.

By Kandice Carter
Science writer

Cyclotron Kids Build Accelerator at JLab

Peter Heuer and Heidi Baumgartner follow a reading on an oscilloscope.

Heidi Baumgartner and Peter Heuer are well on their way to doing something that few teens can claim to have accomplished. Working with staff at Jefferson Lab, they have designed and are building their very own cyclotron.

The teenagers hatched the plan two years ago at astronomy camp, minutes before lights out.

"Most of the kids at the camp were watching a science fiction movie. And the others were deciding what we could do with a high-energy particle beam," Baumgartner recalls.

With a movie about walking plants called Day of the Triffids playing in the background, those interested in a particle beam conducted a web search. They quickly determined that they wouldn't have much luck booking time on any of the world’s established accelerators, where making their own antimatter would be a snap. So, they cast about for another option.

"Heidi had started to sketch a cyclotron in her notebook, and we started thinking about it," Heuer says. "We were entirely joking. But we started talking about it seriously online a couple of weeks later, and it just kind of blossomed from there."

A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1931 and for which he earned the Nobel Prize in physics in 1939. (An excellent description of cyclotrons can be found on the JLab Education website.) In simple terms, the machine contains a source to produce particles that the cyclotron accelerates; a radiofrequency system that pumps energy into a "dee" and creates an electric field to accelerate the particles; a very large magnet to contain the particles as they’re being accelerated; and a vacuum system to remove the air from the area inside the machine where the accelerated particles will travel.

Even though they live nearly 200 miles apart, Baumgartner in New York and Heuer in Maryland, they came up with a simple design of their own that they thought could be built for about $6,000 in Heuer's basement. They then started writing letters to various organizations and companies in hopes of finding a sponsor for the machine.

"One of the letters we sent was to the American Institute of Physics. And Fred Dylla forwarded our letter to Andrew Hutton. And Dr. Hutton wrote us an e-mail saying it would be a real shame to see us irradiate ourselves in the basement," Baumgartner says.

As it turned out, Hutton, Jefferson Lab's Accelerator Division associate director, was a kindred spirit. "I played with my first accelerator after school, and I knew that that was what I wanted to spend my life on," says Hutton.

Heidi Baumgartner and Peter Heuer, The Cyclotron Kids, take a break from their efforts to build a cyclotron at Jefferson Lab.

Hutton had grown up in Northwood, England, within sight of Mt. Vernon Hospital and its cancer research institute. "The head of the institute was Hal Gray, after whom the unit of absorbed radiation dose is named: the Gray. And he allowed me to go after school to play with his small electron linear accelerator, which was being used for radiation research," he recalls.

The teenagers were a little hesitant at first to follow up. "We were afraid if we went anywhere, they were going to take over the project and we would end up just physically screwing things together," Heuer says.

But that's not the treatment they've received at Jefferson Lab. Hutton paired the students with mentors for each of the different systems they needed to design for their cyclotron. He also helped provide the teenagers with some funding to build the machine.

"They have been very good at explaining the information we need, giving us helpful advice, but letting us do all the designing," Heuer says. "And if something is wrong, they tell us after we're done, so our design is our work. And that's very satisfactory."

The kind of cyclotron the students want to build has an ion source that strips the electrons from hydrogen atoms, leaving behind a bare proton. Once the cyclotron has accelerated the protons to a high-enough energy, 2.4 Mega-electron volts, the protons will exit the cyclotron and enter a tantalum target, where collisions with the nuclei produce electrons and their opposites, the antimatter the students are anxious to produce: positrons.

Positrons cannot be seen directly. They will almost immediately collide with nearby electrons, a meeting that will annihilate both particles. The event results in two particles of light streaming away in opposite directions. When the students measure and record the two particles of light that come from the event, they'll know they've made antimatter. It's taken nearly three years since the teenagers first came up with their idea to get to this point. But now, they anticipate being less than a year away from completing the cyclotron and making antimatter.

"It took a long time. We had no idea it was going to be anything like this. We were thinking maybe it would be a few months after we started designing it. We were going to put it together in our basement and see beam," Heuer says.

The teenagers have just finished building a radiofrequency matching network for the dee drive circuit, part of the system that will drive the main component of the accelerator. They've also recently met with technicians in the Jefferson Lab Machine Shop who will wind the copper coils of the cyclotron's main magnet, and they're working with The Apprentice School at Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding to negotiate the fabrication of the magnet yoke, or housing.

They're also waiting for some components to arrive in the mail. "An inordinate amount of our machinery was bought on eBay," Heuer quips. Other parts were donated, such as a vacuum system worth about $4,000 from Capitol Vacuum, a vacuum pump parts supplier in Virginia, and a significant discount for a power amplifier was provided by Cavlon Associates.

Baumgartner and Heuer will continue to work on the machine and make short visits to the lab throughout the next year, culminating in a final stay here next summer, when they expect to complete, commission and run the machine. Their personal deadline for making antimatter is next fall, when they both expect to start college.

While the cyclotron will initially reside in the injector test cave in the Experimental Equipment Lab, the teenagers will likely donate the machine to a local university once they have completed their initial experiments.

"Ultimately, we'll house our accelerator in an educational institution, such as Old Dominion University. They have a new accelerator program," Baumgartner notes. "Hopefully, they'll allow us to come in over the summer and do research there. But we'll figure it out when the time comes."

In the meantime, the teenagers are very grateful to all the people and businesses that have helped their project along and anxiously await the day they produce their first proton beam.

You can follow the teenagers' progress on their website: The Cyclotron Kids.

By Kandice Carter
Science writer

Gilman Wraps Up Term as Users Group Board Chair

Ron Gilman (left), Rutgers University, completed his term as chairman of Jefferson Lab's Users Group Board at the end of the Annual Users Group Meeting and Workshop held in June. Incoming Chair Zein-Eddine Meziani, Temple University, now leads the Users Group Board of Directors.

While the past two years have been unbelievably busy for Ron Gilman, they also have been filled with accomplishment.

Gilman recently completed his term as chairman of Jefferson Lab's Users Group Board, a committee that represents scientists who use Jefferson Lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility for their research.

"It's been very busy the past couple of years. Life is good, because the most important thing for users is doing physics; we've had the spring run and we've been getting a lot of physics done," he said.

Gilman said it didn't take him long to settle back into the role of a regular researcher at Jefferson Lab and professor at Rutgers University; he's already busy with fall semester teaching and research responsibilities. Even so, he took a few minutes to chat about his stint as Users Group chairman.

Gilman said that in his view, the most important accomplishments of the Users Group over the past two years concern its efforts for the next generation.

"It is good when taking a job like the UGBoD Chair position if there is something you want to do that benefits the community. I wanted to create more awards or prizes for the younger people, which could help in job hunting, and do things that would benefit the graduate students," Gilman explained. "We've managed to do several things that have benefited the younger members of the community, including offering free registration for the Users Group meeting and creating the JSA Postdoctoral Fellowship."

Gilman said serving as chair also afforded him the rare privilege of seeing firsthand how the business of science progresses behind the scenes. He said it was particularly eye opening to be working on the Program Advisory Committee, the group that sorts through and chooses the best proposals for experiments to be conducted at Jefferson Lab.

"I had never been inside the PAC meetings until as User Group chair I became an ex-officio PAC member. And it was very nice to see how hard everyone worked to try to identify the best physics," he said.

As for the future, Gilman said he's happy to have completed his term at such an auspicious time.

"We've been getting a lot of physics done and the 12 GeV construction started, and we have a bright future in front of us," Gilman said. "It looks like we're going to have lots to do for the next decade as a result."

Finally, when asked if he had any advice for the incoming chairman, Zein-Eddine Meziani of Temple University, Gilman said not so much.

"The incoming chair is a colleague of 20-plus years and a smart and wonderful person and physicist. I think he'll do an excellent job. He doesn't need any advice from me," Gilman said.

Winning First Place and a $1000 prize in the 2009 JLab Users Group Annual Meeting and Workshop Poster Contest was Timothy Hobbs, Hampton University, with his poster, titled: Mass corrections in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering.

Second Place and a $500 prize was won by Xiaohui Zhan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with her poster, titled: A New Measurement of the Proton Elastic Form Factor Ratio at Low Q2. The poster session/contest took place during the reception at the end of the first day of the JLab annual users meeting on June 8.

Third Place and a $250 prize was awarded to Raphaël Dupré, Argonne National Laboratory, with his poster, titled: Quark Propagation and Hadron Formation in Cold Nuclear Matter. Thirty-two young scientists submitted posters presenting their JLab-based research at the poster contest.

Celebrate Year of Astronomy with Special Lecture

John McFarland, a retired high school science teacher, is founder and president of the Johannes Kepler Project, a non-profit charity founded in 2004. The project's mission is to interest students in science and technology careers by showing that scientists are people and that science is interesting and fun; and to assist teachers by collecting, creating and cataloging astronomy resources

Jefferson Lab will host an entertaining and educational historical interpretation of the life of 16th century astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler at its Tuesday, Oct. 20 Science Series lecture.

The presentation, The Founders of Modern Astronomy, will feature John McFarland, a retired high school science teacher, as Johannes Kepler.  Dressed in period clothing, he will portray Kepler during his early school years to his time as Imperial Mathematician to the Holy Roman Emperor. He will also highlight the accomplishments of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton, with an emphasis on Galileo's astronomical discoveries. The importance of Copernicus' sun-centered universe will be explained, as will Galileo's 1610 discovery of Jupiter's four moons. The discoveries will be explained within the political and religious context of the period.

Four hundred years ago, in 1609, Galileo made the most powerful telescope on the planet and pointed it to the heavens. To commemorate the anniversary, a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO has dubbed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy.

The Oct. 20 lecture will start at 7 p.m., last about an hour and include a question-and-answer period at the end. It will take place in Jefferson Lab's CEBAF Center auditorium, located at 12000 Jefferson Ave., Newport News. It is free and open to anyone interested in learning more about science.

For security purposes, enter at JLab's main entrance (Onnes Drive.). Everyone over 16 is asked to carry a valid photo ID. Security guards may perform ID, parcel and vehicle checks. For directions and information about other JLab public lectures, visit http://education.jlab.org/scienceseries/index.php, or contact Christine Wheeler, by email wheelerc@jlab.org or call 757-269-7560
 

Bertozzi Honored with DNP's First Mentoring Award

William Bertozzi, a professor of physics at MIT and mentor to several dozen Jefferson Lab-affiliated Ph.D.s, was presented with the American Physical Society's Division of Nuclear Physics 2008 Mentoring Award. Outgoing DNP Chair Richard Casten presented the award to Bertozzi at the DNP business meeting held at the APS April Meeting in Denver on May 4. This is the first year that the award has been bestowed.

Group Drops 821 Pounds During Biggest Loser Challenge

Dozens of individuals at JLab have become big losers and they are proud of it. In coordination with Occupational Medicine and Human Resources, Jan Tyler, Science Education manager, spearheaded a Biggest Loser challenge at JLab earlier this year.

More than 60 men and women from across the lab signed up for the 12-week weight loss contest that began April 17 and ended July 10. Registration was $20 per person. All of the registration money was awarded to the five individuals losing the largest percentage of their respective body weight at the end of the program. The first-place loser won 50 percent of the money, 2nd place earned 20 percent, 3rd place got 15 percent, 4th place took 10 percent and 5th place walked away with 5 percent of the pot.

Those signing up represented a cross-section of the lab – men, women, younger, older, from both office and technical jobs.

Dr. Smitty Chandler, Occupational Medicine director, emphasized that the purpose of the contest was to provide interested individuals with an enjoyable format in which to monitor their progress while engaging in healthy eating and exercise habits.

To emphasize healthy eating and exercise, a few lunch-time meetings were held on topics like food portion control and exercise options. Many people teamed up with an exercise buddy and took up a fitness activity that ran the gamut from walking, toning (lifting weights) and cardio exercise (line dancing, aerobics, step aerobics, jogging, etc.) in addition to cutting calories.

On July 10, the group met in the VARC lobby to find out who the biggest losers (i.e. winners) were. "The group lost a total of 821.75 pounds, which is awesome," Tyler said. "Thank you all for participating. No gaining back allowed!"

Colleagues are already asking her to run another challenge in the future. Many of the participants said they both benefited from and enjoyed the program, and added that it allowed them to meet people from different parts of the lab.

Winners are as follows:
1st Place: Garry Justice, Engineering Division: winner of $660 and loser of 62 pounds.
2nd Place: Phil Kessler, Project Management and Integration: winner of $264 and loser of 51.25 pounds.
3rd Place: Mike Martin, Environment, Safety, Health and Quality Division: winner of $198 and loser of 67.5 pounds.
4th Place: Jeff Dail, Engineering Division: winner of $132 and loser of 31 pounds.
5th Place:  Janet Smith, Office of the Chief Financial Officer: winner of $66 and loser of 29.5 pounds.

Going to the Dogs Supports Good Cause

Front row, kneeling from left to right; Nissa (white German shepherd) and Linda Wierenga, Tadack (greater Swiss mountain dog) and Leslie Wemhoff, Sammy (greyhound), Joyce Miller and Radar (greyhound), Mary Beth Stewart and Tobie (golden retriever), Tom Grummell and Lil (beagle mix), and Roxie (Yellow Lab) and Dennis Zekoff.

Back Row, standing from left to right: Peter Monaghan, Connie Adams and Gizmo (rat terrier/toy poodle mix), William Whitaker, Jen Monaghan and Shadow (Yorkshire terrier), and Brian Kross and Loki (boxer).

The Jefferson Activities Group Dog Training Club's second group of dogs and handlers were tested for the Canine Good Citizen and Therapy Dog International certification on June 16.

The purpose of the Canine Good Citizen Test, a certification program of the American Kennel Club, is to demonstrate that the dog can be a respected member of the community, and can be trained and conditioned always to behave in the home, in public places and in the presence of other dogs, explained Joyce Miller, dog training club captain and Physics Division staff member.

The primary objective of the Therapy Dog International, dog and handler is to provide comfort and companionship by sharing the dog with patients in hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions.

Along with the group of dogs and handlers who passed the tests in 2008, the JAG Dog Training Club plans to participate in monthly Paws to Read programs at local libraries in Hampton and Tabb. The mission of the Paws to Read program is to improve the literacy skills of children with the assistance of registered canine reading companions in a fun and relaxed environment. Research with therapy animals indicates that children with low self-esteem are often more willing to interact with an animal than another person, according to Miller. The dogs listen uncritically and wag their tails as the kids read. Paws to Read attracts children from all reading levels who come to the library once a month to read to trained therapy dogs.

The CGC/TDI evaluator, Helen Noles, said this about the JAG Dog Training Club group, "The dogs and handlers were wonderful! They are all great dogs and are going to make wonderful therapy dogs!"

The JAG Dog Training Club is open to all JLab employees, users, family members and their dogs. The club meets on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 p.m. at the Beechwood Recreation Center in Denbigh. If you are interested in becoming a member of the dog club and training your dog, contact Joyce Miller, captain, at ext. 7163 or miller@jlab.org , or Brian Kross, co-captain, ext. 7022 or kross@jlab.org.

"Sweet" on Safety Month

Lieutenant Carroll Burnette, Jefferson Lab Security Officer

Lieutenant Carroll Burnette, a Top Guard Security Officer assigned to Jefferson Lab, hands out "Think Safety" lollipops to JLab staff and users entering the Accelerator Site. Top Guard officers passed out 300 lollipops and 3000 "Safety First" mints during June – raising safety awareness with a smile and the sweet reminders. This is the third year that Top Guard has distributed small treats imprinted with safety messages.
To keep safety at the forefront of their work, Top Guard has a monthly calendar that provides a JLab specific safety tip for each day. Safety tips are briefed at the beginning of each shift and are shared with the JLab community. Recently Chris Stuart, Top Guard’s Vice President of Client Relations & Business Development, spoke with JLab's Worker Safety Committee to share with them what Top Guard officers are doing to promote safety awareness and safe practices.
June of each year has been designated National Safety Month. The federal government, states and many businesses and industry encourage involvement and raised awareness on a range of safety issues and concerns with the goal of reducing injuries both on and off the job.

Many activities and informational material for the awareness month is provided by the National Safety Council.

Milestones for July through mid-September 2009

Hello
Keith Blackburn, Mechanical Technician, Free-Electron Laser Division
Maria Chevtsova, Research Student Intern, Accelerator Division
Alina Dolgolenko, Physics Student Intern, Physics Division
Chase Dubbe, Mechanical Engineer, Engineering Division
Pavel Evtushenko, FEL staff scientist, transfer to the Free-Electron Laser Division
Maya Keller, Accelerator Health Physicist, Environment, Safety, Health & Quality Division
Michelle Lechman, Public Affairs Associate, Chief Operating Officer Division
Tina Menefee, Safety Warden Coordinator, transfer to the Environment, Safety, Health and Quality Division
William Mooney, Energy and Resource Conservation Engineer, Chief Operating Officer Division
Bernhard Musch, Post Doctoral Fellow, Chief Scientist Officer Division
Satoshi Nakamura, EBAC Post Doctoral Fellow, Chief Scientist Officer Division
Andre Newman, Vacuum Technologist, Engineering Division
Joshua Pierce, Cryogenic/Polarized Target Physicist, Physics Division
Lionel Quettier, Superconducting Magnet Mechanical Engineer, Engineering Division
Shannon Ritter, Design Student Intern, Chief Operating Officer Division
Bradley Sawatzky, Experimental Hall C Physicist, Physics Division
Robert Sperlazza, Facilities Maintenance Manager, Chief Operating Officer Division
Balsa Terzic, CASA Scientist, Accelerator Division
Jason Willoughby, Student Engineering Draftsperson, Chief Operating Officer Division
Glenn Young, 12 GeV Associate Project Manager, 12 GeV Upgrade Team

Goodbye
Robert Ewing, Environment, Safety, Health & Quality Division
Hrishikesh Phadke, Engineering Division

These Milestone entries, listed alphabetically, are full-time, term, casual and student actions posted by Human Resources from July through mid-September 2009.

Approximately two dozen JLab career opportunities are currently posted at: https://careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/client_jeffersonlab/external/search.do
For more information about employment at JLab, visit: http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/admin/HR/index.html

JLab Careers are also posted under the Popular Applications listing on JLab's internal Insight page.