New leadership for the LHC Physics Center

Beginning August 1, Ian Shipsey of Purdue University (left) will join Dan Green in directing the LHC Physics Center.

On August 1, the LHC Physics Center will welcome a new member to its leadership team. Ian Shipsey, a professor of physics at Purdue University, was appointed co-coordinator of the LPC in June 2009. He succeeds Chris Tully of Princeton, who now takes up the task of CMS Hadron Calorimeter Institution Board Chair.

Green said Shipsey will bring invaluable skills to the post.

"Ian is very outgoing, and he's good at outreach," Green said. "He will be a great liaison to the university community and will provide valuable managerial experience to the LPC."

Shipsey has an extensive leadership background, serving from 2001 to 2004 as co-spokesperson for the CLEO experiment, a general-purpose particle detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. He helped to design the silicon detector for that experiment, and in 2001, he began working on the silicon detector for CMS. In 2007, he became the chair of the LPC Advisory Board, where he focused on strengthening the involvement of graduate students and postdocs in the experiment.

"There are 3,000 people working on CMS worldwide," Shipsey explained. "We want to bring them all to the table. There's such complex food on this table that it will take all 3,000 people, fully engaged, to figure out how to eat it."

For the next year, Shipsey will split his time between Purdue and Fermilab. He said he is thrilled to dive into the new work.

"The LHC is an unprecedented project," Shipsey said. "There has never been a machine like this; there has never been a challenge this complex. It's a bit like in the old days when people gathered to build a cathedral, to create something that transcends the people working on it. To be a part of this human story, as it's being written, is incredibly exciting."

-- Rachel Carr

Take Five Q&A

Q: I've noticed that many injuries this year have involved cuts that may have been prevented with the use of gloves. What gloves are available? How do I get them? And which ones are appropriate for what tasks?

A: You can find gloves for a multitude of tasks in the Fermilab Stock Room.

For general material handling, cloth, leather or mechanics' gloves work well.

Gloves containing steel, Kevlar or other cut-resistant fibers are a good choice for when you handle objects with sharp edges or cut materials with a sharp tool.

Be sure to choose gloves with a non-slip palm when handling slippery or wet materials.

Please consult with your Senior Safety Officer or Industrial Hygienist when choosing gloves for chemical handling. This is important, as a glove that provides protection against one type of chemical may not work well against another.

Landmarks: Powerful pictures

From Physical Review Focus, July 20, 2009

Focus Landmarks feature important papers from the archives of the Physical Review.

Every popular explanation of particle physics is liberally illustrated with cartoon-like pictures of straight and wiggly lines representing electrons, photons, and quarks, interacting with one another. These so-called Feynman diagrams were introduced by Richard Feynman in the Physical Review in 1949, and they quickly became an essential tool for particle physicists. Early on, Feynman struggled to explain the meaning of the diagrams to his fellow physicists. But using them, he came up with easy answers to difficult problems in quantum mechanics and ultimately won a share of the Nobel Prize.

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