Geneva, 17 Desember 1999. The CERN1 Council, where the representatives of the 20 Member States of the Organization decide on scientific programmes and financial resources, held its 114th session on 17 December under the chairmanship of Dr. Hans C. Eschelbacher (DE).
President's Report
Dr Eschelbacher opened the meeting with comments on the state of CERN at the opening of a new millennium. "CERN has from the beginning delivered outstanding achievements to the scientific, technological and educational world. But now, moving into the next millennium, I believe the best is yet to come. CERN is well prepared to master the challenges of globalisation for research institutions. What will become dominant in the next decades, obviously also in the field of HEP and computing, is global competition and co-operation within strategic alliances. To be successful in that global competition one has to be attractive to the best people, one has to run the best facilities and among many other things provide a fruitful climate and optimal conditions for co-operation and team working. We can state clearly that CERN is successful in this respect."
Director General Status Report
The Director-General began his report to Council with a discussion of the exceptional performance of CERN's accelerators in 1999. The Laboratory's flagship, LEP, again broke all records as its collision energy was taken to 204 GeV, four GeV above design energy. Meanwhile, the upstream accelerators, the SPS and PS, supplied beams of protons and lead ions to experiments with customary efficiency. Towards the end of the year, the PS achieved an important milestone when proton beams with LHC-characteristics were extracted for the first time.
The research highlight of the year was the continuing search for Higgs particles, whose existence would help explain mass. Theoreticians have calculated that the most probable energy at which to find Higgs particles has already been exceeded at LEP. That means that 'every further GeV could be the right one,' explained the Director-General. Next year, LEP's final year of running, the energy will be taken as high as possible to maximise CERN's chances of discovering these elusive particles. If that turns out to be not enough, pointed out the Director-General, then the LHC will cover the rest of the possible energy range that Higgs particles could inhabit.
Moving on to the LHC, the Director-General signalled good progress as the two big general purpose detectors, ATLAS and CMS, move from R&D to production. The smaller collaborations, ALICE and LHCb, started later and are making good progress towards the production phase. Civil engineering to house the new detectors and the new machine is progressing well with most of the surface buildings complete or underway. Underground work is also nearing completion with the exception of one of the underground caverns where water briefly held up progress. Those problems have now been overcome and work is expected to be back on schedule soon.
The design for the LHC's main bending magnets was finalised 'in every respect,' reported the Director-General. After testing many different designs a first prototype to the final design has been successfully tested at CERN and a second has just arrived. In the final design, each of the 1200 magnets will be 15 metres long. The bending magnets' job will be to keep protons on track as they race around the accelerator. That will require a high magnetic field of 8.3 Tesla, which will be achieved using superconducting coils made from niobium-titanium alloy. A first consignment of 30 dipoles has just been ordered from industry in France, Germany and Italy. Components are being supplied by firms in Europe, Japan, Russia and the USA, making the LHC a truly global undertaking. Full scale production should get the go-ahead in 2001, and when it does the LHC will consume the lion's share of the world's total production of niobium-titanium alloy.
Looking to the long term future, the Director-General drew attention to CERN's innovative linear accelerator study, CLIC, and a new R&D project to study high intensity proton accelerators.
In conclusion, the Director-General pointed to a diverse and active research programme at CERN. As the LEP era comes to an end next year, research will continue at the new COMPASS experiment and three experiments that will look at antimatter using the Laboratory's new Antiproton Decelerator (AD), successfully commissioned this year. A newly-approved neutron time-of-flight facility will soon join CERN's programme, complementing the well-established ISOLDE radioactive beam facility. For the longer term, the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso project, approved at this meeting, and of course the LHC mean that 'CERN is well equipped to meet the challenges of the next century,' said the Director-General.
Draft Budget for 2000
Council approved the draft budget for the Organization for 2000 of 1022 MCHF. Cost Variation Index Taking into consideration the Geneva consumer price cost variation index and the movement of salaries in the reference organizations, Council approved a salary adjustment index of 1.29 % for the year 2000. Senior staff appointment Prof G. Altarelli was appointed as Leader of the TH Division for three years from 1 July 2000 to 30 June 2003.Elections Dr. Hans C. Eschelbacher (DE) was re-elected as President of the CERN Council for the period of one year starting in January 2000. Prof. Fernando Aldana (ES) was re-elected Vice-President of Council for a period of one year as of 1 January 2000. Mr Fernando Bello (PT) was re-appointed Chairman of the Finance Committee for a period of one year as from 1 January 2000. Dr Leif Westgaard (NO) was re-elected Vice-Chairman of the Finance Committee for a period of one year, from 1 January 2000. G.E Kalmus (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK) was re-appointed Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee for one year as from 1 January 2000. Professors P. Carlson (KTH, Stockholm, Sweden), K. Rybicki (INP, Krakow, Poland) and J. Stachel (University of Heidelberg, Germany) were elected members of the Scientific Policy Committee for three years from 1 January 2000 and Professor F. Barreiro was re-elected as a member for three years from 1 January 2000.
Senior Management of CERN as from 1 January 2000
Directors
- Director for Collider Programmes :
R. Cashmore (GB) - Director for Fixed Target and Future Programmes :
C. Détraz (FR) - LHC Project Leader :
L. Evans (GB) - Director for Accelerators :
K. Hübner (AT) - Technical Director :
J. May (DE) - Director of Administration :
M. Robin (FR) - Director for Technology Transfer and for Scientific Computing :
H.F. Hoffmann(DE)
Division Leaders
- Administrative Support (AS):
J. Ferguson (GB) - Information Technology (IT) :
M. Delfino (ES) - Engineering Support and Technologies (EST) :
D. Güsewell (DE) - Education and Technology Transfer (ETT) :
J.-A. Rubio (ES) - Finance (FI) :
A. Naudi (CH/GB) - Large Hadron Collider (LHC) :
Ph. Lebrun (FR) - Experimental Physics (EP) :
G. Goggi (IT) - Personnel (PE) :
J. Van der Boon (NL) - Proton Synchrotron (PS) :
J.-P. Delahaye (FR) - SPS + LEP (SL) :
S. Myers (GB) - Supplies, Procurement and Logistics (SPL) :
R. Perin (IT)* - Technical Inspection & Safety Commission (TIS) :
H. Schönbacher (AT) - Technical Support (ST) :
A. Scaramelli (IT) - Theory (TH) (until June 30th 2000) :
A. De Rújula (ES) **
*as from 1 April K-H. Kissler will be Division Leader of the Supplies, Procurement and Logistics Division.
**as from 1 July Professor Guido Altarelli will be Division Leader of the Theory Division.