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 

Dr. Jenny Regina (Photo: JR/private) has received the PANDA PhD Prize 2022 for her doctoral thesis "Time for Hyperons. Development of Software Tools for Reconstructing Hyperons at PANDA and HADES" at  Uppsala University. Her doctoral advisor was Prof. Dr. Karin Schönning. The award was announced by the spokesman of the PANDA Collaboration, Ulrich Wiedner from the Ruhr-University Bochum, at the most recent PANDA Collaboration meeting at GSI.
The PANDA Collaboration has awarded the PhD Prize once per year since 2013 in order to honor the best dissertation written in connection with the PANDA Experiment. In her dissertation, Physicist Jenny Regina presented a detailed simulation study of hyperons in the PANDA detector, developments of time-based track reconstruction algorithms for PANDA and a library for kinematic fitting in the HADES experiment. A candidate for online track reconstruction algorithms on free streaming data based on a 4D Cellular Automaton has been developed and is benchmarked. It utilizes information from the PANDA straw tube tracker and is agnostic to the point of origin of the particle. The track reconstruction quality assurance procedure and results from the tracking at different event rates have also been presented. Finally, extrapolation algorithms for including hit information from additional detectors in the tracks are outlined. In order to maximize the potential of the predecessor experiment PANDA@HADES, a kinematic fitting procedure has been developed for HADES that combines geometric the decay vertex information of neutral particles and track parameters such as momentum. Journal publications are prepared for each part and Dr. Regina has presented her work at several national and international conferences, as well as in plenary sessions at the PANDA collaboration meeting.
The PANDA Collaboration awards the PhD Prize to specifically honor students’ contributions to the PANDA project. Candidates for the PhD Prize are nominated by their doctoral advisors. In addition to being directly related to the PANDA Experiment, the nominees’ doctoral degrees must have received a rating of “very good” or better. Up to three candidates are shortlisted for the award and can present their dissertations at the PANDA Collaboration meeting. The winner is chosen by a committee that is appointed for this task by the PANDA collaboration.

The PANDA Outstanding Achievement Award 2021 went to

• Peter Wintz
• Gabriela Perez Andrade
• Artur Derichs
• Jerzy Smyrski
• Rafał Lalik
• Konrad Sumara

for the successful preparation, installation, commissioning and deployment of the forward tracker planes (STS1/2) in the PANDA@HADES setup.
This detector system is a crucial part of the upgraded HADES and the first PANDA detector to be taken into operation at the FAIR site as a part of the Phase 0 initiative.
The STS1/2 increases the physics potential of the HADES experiment in particular for the hyperon physics program, as demonstrated in the HADES / PANDA@HADES joint publication "Production and electromagnetic decay of hyperons: a feasibility study with HADES as a Phase-0 experiment at FAIR",
Eur. Phys. J. A (2021) 57:138.

Dr. Bai-Long Hoid has received the Panda Theory PhD Prize 2022 for his doctoral thesis "Taming Hadronic Effects at the Precision Frontier: From the Muon Anomaly to Rare Decays".

His doctoral advisor was PD Dr. Bastian Kubis from the University of Bonn. The award was announced at the most recent Panda Collaboration meeting at GSI, Darmstadt and handed over to Dr. Bai-Long Hoid (with certificate) by the spokesperson of the Panda Collaboration, Prof Ulrich Wiedner (right), Univeristy Bochum, Germany, deputy spokesperson Prof Karin Schönning (2nd right), University Uppsala, Sweden and chair of the Theory Adisory Group Prof Christian Fischer (left), University Giessen, Germany, during a dinner ceremony.

The Panda Collaboration has awarded the Theory PhD Prize for the third time to honor the best theory dissertation written in connection with the Panda Experiment.

In his work Dr. Bai-Long Hoid studied the dominating theoretical uncertainties regarding the prediction of the muon anomalous moment, which come from hadronic vacuum polarization and hadronic light-by-light scattering. Currently there is a 5$\sigma$ discrepancy between experimental measurements and theoretical predictions. Dr. Bai-Long Hoid successfully addressed a very complex problem and also significantly advanced the theoretical tools that are required to carry out high precision calculations for the relevant hadronic quantities in this low energy regime. His scientific publications have received high recognition in the community and beyond.
 

The Panda Collaboration awards PhD Prizes to specifically honor students’ contributions related to the Panda project. Candidates for the PhD Prize are nominated by their doctoral advisors. In addition to being directly related to the Panda Experiment, the nominees’ doctoral degrees must have received a rating of “very good” or better. Up to three candidates are shortlisted for the award and can present their dissertations at the Panda Collaboration meeting. The winner is chosen by a committee that is appointed for this task by the Panda Collaboration.

  (Photo: James Ritman, GSI)

Five years after the groundbreaking ceremony of the FAIR civil construction, the foundation stone ceremony of the Fair Control Center (FCC) took place on March 29, 2022 at the main entrance to the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung.

High representatives from politics, both the federal government and the state of Hesse, as well as from science and the building industry have been taking part.
The Federal Minister of Education and Research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, the Hessian Minister of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts, Angela Dorn, the Hessian Minister of Finance, Michael Boddenberg, Jochen Partsch, Lord Mayor of the Science City of Darmstadt and Volker Pohlschmidt, Managing Director of Bauunternehmung Karl Gemünden GmbH & Co. KG visited FAIR/GSI, gave greetings and symbolically laid the foundation stone for the FCC.
You can find more details in a GSI/FAIR press release.