National asset

Vladimir Shiltsev

Vladimir Shiltsev, director of the Accelerator Physics Center, wrote this week's column.

Just two weeks ago, several of our colleagues were given Exceptional Performance Recognition Awards. These awards are given once a year, and Director Pier Oddone personally delivers the awards in a ceremonial atmosphere. This year, a few of the recipients missed the ceremony, including Nikolai Mokhov of the Accelerator Physics Center who was on travel.

Mokhov's EPRA citation, listed below, is possibly the longest ever: ".For sustained substantial contributions through leadership in energy deposition studies for many machines and projects, including Tevatron, Booster, Main Injector, LHC/LARP, ILC, Muon Collider, mu2e, LBNE and for leadership of the Run II bent crystal collimation experiment T980."

The award was delivered separately, but I'd like to take a chance to congratulate Nikolai once more and say a few words on that occasion.

Nikolai Mokhov

Nikolai Mokhov is the head of the Energy Deposition Department in the APC. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical and math physics in 1976 from Moscow Physical Engineering Institute, Russia. His thesis was titled "Study of Internuclear Cascades Induced by 1-5000 GeV Hadrons."

Since 1976, he has worked in the area of radiation physics and energy deposition and has developed a code named MARS for the energy deposition simulations, which is widely used by an international community of about 400. Nikolai has authored more than about 300 scientific papers and has written a book titled "Passage of High-Energy Particles through Matter."

From 1976 to 1992, he was a radiation physics group leader in the Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino, Russia, and then he worked at the Superconducting Super Collider laboratory in Texas, before joining Fermilab in 1994.

Nikolai gives many talks at various DOE reviews since he is involved in so many projects and many committees enjoy his cumbersome technical presentation with numerous colorful energy deposition slides. At the end of one of the meetings, a member of the review committee stated that "Mokhov's group is a national asset!" meaning that Nikolai and his colleagues do a great job not only for Fermilab but for the entire U.S. and international high-energy community. I cannot agree more with that statement - and use that opportunity to thank Nikolai Mokhov for the work so well done.