CERN’s LHCb experiment has donated its decommissioned outer tracker detector component to PANDA. 

PANDA is happy about a gift it has received from LHCb, one of the four big CERN experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. LHCb has sent their decommissioned Outer Tracker (OT) from Geneva to Darmstadt, where it has arrived at GSI (25. August 2023) after a special transport of five days via truck and ship. The LHCb colleagues at CERN prepared the detector in its transport frame with protecting plastic for a journey in three stages, due to the "package" size: Seven meter long, 3.5 meter wide, 5.5 meter high and a weight of 24 tons. The first stage of the journey by truck brought the OT from CERN to the harbour of Colmar where a Rhine ship took over the second stage and delivered the OT to Gernsheim harbour, where a truck did the last stage to GSI. 

The donation from LHCb to PANDA was initiated by by our deputy technical coordinator Anastasios "Tassos" Belias and Niels Tuning from LHCb/CERN after discussions about spare detector modules at a conference a few years ago.
Finally the LHCb collaboration decided to donate the whole OT to the PANDA collaboration, which was then formally signed in a contract between GSI and CERN/LHCb last year.

The donation was made possible thanks to the close cooperation in logistics and technical aspects between several colleagues at CERN and GSI/FAIR, in particular Niels Tuning (LHCb, Nikhef/CERN) and Anastasios Belias (PANDA, GSI/FAIR) and their relentless efforts to give the formidable outer tracker a second life. The donation was kindly agreed upon by the LHCb groups who meticulously built and operated the outer tracker, namely,

•  the National Institute for Subatomic Physics, Nikhef, the Netherlands,
•  the Physikalisches Institut der Universität Heidelberg, Germany,
•  the National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland,
•  the Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, Poland,
•  and the Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany.

The OT consists of 54.000 Straw tubes, each 2.4 m long with a diameter of 5 mm, which are arranged in staggered double layers and mounted to twelve C-shaped mechanical frames. The C-frames are inserted in the big blue transport frame (c.f. pictures).  

There are several ideas how individual parts of the OT can be re-used in different experiments and set-ups in the future.
At PANDA the tracker will be able to detect the light hadrons produced by the collisions. Hadron spectroscopy is where the physics goals of LHCb and PANDA overlap, and the two will be able to collect complementary data that can later be analysed and compared. The tracker will also be used by students and young researchers in R&D projects, as well as in outreach activities for schools and the general public.

Once again this year, the outstanding efforts of two groups were recognized by the PANDA Collaboration and awarded the annual prize for their exceptional work for the operation and realization of PANDA at FAIR.

The first award went to Tobias Stockmanns (middle photo on the right) and Anna Alicke (on the right photo) for their development of a realistic and generalized tracking algorithm for the PANDA experiment. Their development of a more generalized algorithm that is agnostic to the point of production is absolutely crucial for the foreseen hyperon physics program of PANDA and an important milestone for the PANDA software. 

The second prize went to Lars Schmitt (middle photo on the left) and Anastasios Belias (on the left) for their tireless work to realize the PANDA detector at FAIR. Their continuous persistence and creativity, which went far beyond what could have been expected, is not only an inspiration for the entire collaboration, but also a guarantee for the realization of our ambitious project eventually. Both are unparalleled in their commitment to the technical side of the project and are like a rock in the current storm

The awards were presented by the Spokesperson Ulrich Wiedner (who took the middle photo) on the occasion of a boat tour during the recent Collaboration Meeting In Prague.
 

Every year, PANDA awards a prize for the best PhD thesis in PANDA of the last year and we’d like to ask again for nominations for this year's prize. The rules are simple as usual:

Who is eligible? And how can nominations be made?

Members of PANDA who have had the oral defense of their PhD thesis during the year preceding the selection are eligible. The thesis may contain work related to other topics/experiments, but the majority of the work in the thesis must be directly connected to PANDA. The thesis advisor can nominate someone who successfully passed the oral defense during the period from June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023.

A nomination can be made until August 31, 2023 (almost 2 months from now!!) by submitting the following information to the speaker of the collaboration:

1. A nomination letter in which the content of the thesis and the importance of this work for PANDA is described. This should also motivate why that thesis should be considered as the best one of the selection period from PANDA.

2. The thesis must be made available online on the PANDA webpage, and the URL must be included in the nomination. If it is not allowed to upload the thesis to the PANDA website, then a hard copy of the thesis must be submitted.

3. If the thesis is not written in English, then a (couple page) summary must be provided in English.

4. A copy of a certificate showing the grade achieved by the thesis (and a short description of the grade scale). This certificate should indicate the date of the oral exam. If that is not the case, then some other confirmation of when the oral exam was held must be provided (a letter for the thesis advisor will suffice, if a copy of a formal document is delivered before the September meeting.)

The nomination must be made in writing/email. The PANDA Award Committee will propose a PhD Prize Committee as soon as all nominations are in. 

Please keep in mind that potential awardees for the PhD Prize need to be present at the GSI Meeting in October for their PhD presentation. Please consider registration and (if necessary) visa application in time for them.

In spring 2023 the PANDA collaboration elected a new spokesperson and deputy - both started their two year term on July 1st.
Following the experiments "Governance Rules" the collaboration members with voting rights voted for Klaus Peters (CV) to become the new spokesperson and Miriam Fritsch (CV) to be the new deputy.
 
We thank the former team Ulrich Wiedner and Karin Schönning for their work in rough times and wish the new team to have a good hand for the future challenges of PANDA.  

Dear members of the PANDA collaboration

for the term 1.7.2023 - 30.6.2025 we need to elect a new spokesperson.
The two spokesperson candidates and information about the election process are presented here.
You will find a link to the ballot where those of you with voting rights can could have cast their vote until May 15th, 2023 (that's a Monday). Voting rights have all PANDA members, who belong to the collaboration for more than a year. Due to the decision to exclude the Russian and Belarussian colleagues from active participation, there are 318 members with voting rights. As our governance rules claim a 50% quorum, there need to be at least 160 casted votes for the election to be valid. Furthermore, a candidate needs more than 50% of the votes to be elected.Therefore our appeal: Please, exercise your voting rights! The election is closed. Results will be communicated by our CB chair. The candidates have presented themselves at our last collaboration meeting in Bochum and they have prepared their CVs and a short "mission statement", which you can find in the tables below (alphabetical order).

The spokesperson candidates are:

Photo	Name	CV	Statement
	Klaus Peters	CV_KP	Statement_KP
	Ulrich Wiedner	CV_UW	Statement_UW

Please, participate in the election and cast your ballot!
The election is closed. Results have been communicated by our CB chair:

Dear PANDAs,

here comes the result of our Spokesperson elections:

Number of cast votes: 186  (i.e. quorum >50% of eligible voters (=318) fulfilled).    Turnout:  58.5%

Klaus Peters        98 (52,7%)
Ulrich Wiedner    82 (44,1%)
Abstention            6 (3,2%)

With this also the need for an absolute majority (>50%) is fulfilled and according to our governance rules Klaus Peters is elected as our PANDA Spokesperson for the term 01.07.2023 - 30.06.2025.

Congratulation Klaus !  We wish you fortunate navigation and all the best in making the right decisions for PANDA in real difficult times  

Although still in office until end of June, I definitely do not like to miss to thank already now Ulrich for his excellent work during the past two years representing PANDA in numerous committee sessions, managing the NRW-FAIR project,  tireless fighting with politicians and funding agencies, ...

Looking forward to see you all in Prague next month,

with best regards, Frank