Butler to head the US-CMS Research Program

Joel Butler (left) will take over for Dan Green as head of the US-CMS Research Program.

On January 1, Joel Butler will replace Dan Green as head of the US-CMS Research Program. Butler has held a number of positions at Fermilab--from working on fixed-target experiments and beams to serving as head of the Computing Division. Most recently, he's been working on CMS's forward pixel tracker: a detector that will hug the LHC beam pipe and track particles out to a radius of 20 cm. "I've been focusing on this little part of CMS for two years," said Butler, "but now my job has a much bigger scope. I need to make sure all the different US efforts come together and orient ourselves to the new task ahead."

The new task is calibrating and commissioning CMS. Green--who has headed the US-CMS Detector Construction Project and Research Program for 12 years and will still play an active role--says these next steps require the perfect balance of restraint and enthusiasm. "You have to be open to new ideas, but you also have to have a tremendous scope of organization," he said. Like tuning an instrument, it is important that CMS measures parts of the Standard Model that are already understood before new discoveries can be made.

Once CMS is tuned and taking data, US-CMS will help keep the detector calibrated, provide maintenance, plan new upgrades and perform data analysis. As a "Tier 1" institution, Fermilab will also receive, process and distribute CMS data to about 2,000 other researchers worldwide. "The idea is that extracting the physics will be challenging, and it will take the efforts of physicists from a number of countries to do the analysis," said Butler. "People from all over the world can grab the data from us without a lot of overhead." With experience from the Tevatron, and with an LHC Physics Center stationed in Wilson Hall, Fermilab physicists will be able to deal with problems, provide tutorials, and mentor CMS researchers from all over the world.

"We want to be fast, we want to be accurate, and we don't want to stifle anyone's creativity," said Butler. "We want to keep the throttle open just enough," added Green.
--Siri Steiner

Bauerdick heads CMS Center

Lothar Bauerdick

Bauerdick's role will be different from that of Joel Butler, head of US-CMS; while Butler is heading all US efforts with Fermilab as the hub, Bauerdick will organize all CMS efforts at the lab. Bauerdick says he will work to manage, integrate and communicate Fermilab's CMS efforts and to make CMS more visible at the lab. "We should be communicating about what we are doing and how we are doing it," said Bauerdick.

Bauerdick came to Fermilab from DESY six years ago, and has led the US software and computing project to build the Tier-1 center and to develop the software to manage and analyze CMS data. "Fermilab plays such an important role for building and commissioning CMS," he said, "I look forward to the CMS center helping us to get ready for extracting the physics."
--Siri Steiner

The Courier News,
November 22, 2006:

Fermi asks public its views on collider

BATAVIA -- The next step in the evolution of particle physics could be coming to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the near future -- and officials there want to know what you think about it.

Fermilab is one of four sites in contention to host the International Linear Collider, a 20-mile-long particle accelerator that is hoped will bring scientists to the next level in their understanding of the universe.
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