NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Scientists, engineers and students from across U.S. and around the world will converge on Richmond on May 3 to present and discuss the latest advancements underway at particle accelerators around the globe.
Accelerators are powerful research tools used to explore the basic building blocks of matter (protons and neutrons, quarks and gluons and other sub-atomic particles), for discovering new particles, and for recreating – in a controlled fashion – conditions that have not existed since instants after the Big Bang. These machines, used for fundamental research, have also enabled the development of thousands of accelerators worldwide that serve as essential tools in disease diagnosis and treatment, in biomedical and materials research and in manufacturing, energy and security.
More than 1,200 participants, including researchers and engineers, more than 100 students and 120 vendors, will gather at the Greater Richmond Convention Center May 3-8 for the 2015 International Particle Accelerator Conference – a scientific and technological gathering where cutting-edge accelerator capabilities, and the latest accelerator R&D work and commercial applications are presented. It is also where the latest information is shared regarding world-renown research facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
The event will officially kick off at 9 a.m. on May 4 with Virginia’s Secretary of Education, Anne Holton, presenting the welcome and opening remarks. More than 100 general and technical sessions are scheduled during the week-long event. Highlights of the general sessions will include updates on upgrade projects at a handful of major research facilities – including Jefferson Lab’s 12 GeV Upgrade to its Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, and the recent restart of operations at the Large Hadron Collider.
Each day, Monday through Thursday, will end with a poster session where both junior and senior researchers will present highlights of some of the most leading-edge and promising research being conducted in the fields of accelerator science.
As a special evening event, IPAC will hold a Women in Science panel discussion on Wednesday, May 6, from 6-8 p.m. A diverse panel of internationally recognized women researchers will lead a dynamic discussion of the Cultural Impact on Women in Science and Engineering. The panel and moderator include some of today’s most widely recognized women physicists and engineers associated with particle accelerators, nuclear and particle physics and engineering. The event is open to the public, but reservations are required. Contact Brita Hampton via email at hampton@jlab.org or call 757-269-7633 by 5 p.m. May 5 if you wish to attend. In particular, young women interested in careers in science are encouraged to attend.
This is the sixth IPAC conference, which resulted from combining previous, regional accelerator conferences held in North American, Europe and Asia. IPAC 15 is sponsored by the IEEE (Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society) and the American Physical Society (Division of Physics of Beams) and is hosted this year by the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, located in Newport News.