New Director for North West Accelerator Science
The Cockcroft Institute – one of the UK’s flagship centres of excellence in accelerator science – has appointed world-renowned physicist Professor Swapan Chattopadhyay as its Inaugural Director.
Professor Chattopadhyay is currently Associate Director at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in the US and renowned for breakthroughs in the physics and technology of particle beams and photon science. He will take up his new post at the Cockcroft Institute in March 2007.
He will also be appointed to the first Chair of Accelerator Physics in the UK – created jointly by the Universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester. “The creation of the Cockcroft Institute is most opportune as the world moves into gear for the challenges of particle accelerators in the 21st Century,” he said. “Accelerator Science poses major new challenges for the future which will open fantastic new horizons and opportunities for science and its application and thereby for the progress of humankind globally.”
The Cockcroft Institute is a new joint venture at the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus in Cheshire involving the Universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA).
Professor Chattopadhyay is recognised for his contributions to phase space cooling, innovative particle colliders, novel synchrotron-radiation production and ultra-short femtosecond X-ray sources.
Dr Rebecca Seviour of Lancaster University’s Engineering Department was one of the first appointments to the Cockcroft Institute and is spearheading the Cockcroft institute’s generic RF cavity research program.
She is a member of the Microwave Research Group at Lancaster and of the Cockcroft Institute and has special expertise in the design of normal and superconducting cavities for particle accelerators and an extensive background in materials science on microscopic electronic transport.
Dr Seviour has been awarded over £800,000 for cutting edge research to develop the first ever compact particle accelerator and was identified by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as an “outstanding researcher” who is a future leader in her field.
The other appointee from Lancaster University is mathematical physicist Dr Jonathan Gratus from the Physics Department.