PhD prize 2023 call for proposals

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.

Announcement Spokesperson election 2023

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.  

PANDA PhD Prize 2022

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.

 

Outstanding Achievement Award 2021

PANDA at HADES STS dectectorsThe 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.

PANDA Theory PhD Prize 2022

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)

Foundation Stone of Fair Control Center

 

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.

Support for Ukrainian Scientists and Students

We would like to collect support information for Ukrainian Scientists and Students. 
If you can contribute to the list (ordered by notification date) below, please contact us.

Support list

Administrative help:

Practical help:

PANDA PhD Prize 2021

Dr. Oliver Noll (Photo: ON/private) has received the PANDA PhD Prize 2021 for his doctoral thesis "Digital Signal Processing for the Measurement of Particle Properties with the PANDA Electromagnetic Calorimeter" at GSI, FAIR and Mainz University. His doctoral advisor was Prof. Dr. Frank Maas from Mainz University. The award was announced by the spokesman of the PANDA Collaboration, Ulrich Wiedner from the Ruhr-University Bochum, at the most recent Online PANDA Collaboration meeting.

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 his dissertation, Physicist Oliver Noll worked on the development of the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter, which is one of the main subsystems of the PANDA experiment. Prior to Oliver Noll’s work no specific algorithm for the digital processing of the APFEL readout chip signals existed. In the thesis work, a detailed study of the APFEL pulse shape and noise components was performed. Within the PhD work also major contributions to the development, construction and operation of EMC prototypes, were carried out and which were used in beam tests for proving the functionality of the PANDA EMC design and optimizing its performance. Finally, several contributions to the design and to the construction of the backward end-cap EMC have been made, ranging from mechanical solutions for holding and encasing the detector components to the development of a system for the calibration of the temperature sensors or the implementation of various parts of slow-control software.
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.

Outstanding Achievement Awards 2020

The "Outstanding Achievement Award 2020" goes to three groups. The awardees are: Outreach Committee, EMC Software Team and our three Coordination Engineers

The Outreach Committee consisting of Miriam Kümmel, Michael Papenbrock, Mustafa Schmidt and Rebecca Seip has given strong momentum to the outreach activities and their efforts will help spreading knowledge and interest about PANDA in society.
The presentation of their work during the Collaboration Meeting 2020/3 was an impressive demonstration of what they have achieved so far: Development of PANDA models in 3D, Lego and virtual reality. This outreach session was very well received, and has, in combination with the aforementioned initiatives given momentum to the outreach activities.

The picture shows a CAD PANDA model consisting of about 10.000 Lego bricks, which was generated by a special Lego planning tool.

 

The groups from Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS, Beijing University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei and Nankai University, Nankai led by Sun Shengsen did extraordinary work on updating the EMC offline software. The work includes implementing the latest geometries, updating the digitization algorithms according to the test beam data and firmware algorithms, as well as work on the reconstruction software and the calibration algorithms.

The contributers - Guangshun Huang, Chunxiu Liu, Dong Liu, Qing Piu, Sun Yankun, Guang Zhao and others – paved the way to a better PANDAroot software for the simulation and reconstruction of the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter.

The picture is a Monte Carlo study of the angle between two photons detected by the EMC coming from a $\pi^0$ decay as a function of the pion energy.
 

The three engineers performed a significant concerted effort to work out the detailed specifications of the PANDA infrastructure regarding support structures and supply infrastructures.  Daniel Glaab, Stefan Koch and Jost Lüning designed support structures in particular cover platforms, support frames, rails and movements systems, installation devices and supply infrastructure in particular covers drag chains, cable trays, electrical power distribution and grounding, cooling water and technical gases, everything with the whole lifetime of PANDA in mind, from installations to data taking periods and the maintenance phases in-between.

The detailed design serves as a crucial input for the common fund investments for infrastructure of PANDA and has been a central part of the recently submitted TDR to the FAIR ECE. It brings the collaboration in the position to plan the tendering of the construction of the required infrastructure components.

The resulting detailed technical report was praised by experts at FAIR and from CERN reviewing the document for the level of detail and expertise.

The picture is a CAD drawing of our detector in the maintenace position with all support platforms in place.

Congratulations to all awardees. You have done an outstanding job!

Doors wide open for PANDA

The yoke of the PANDA Solenoid Magnet was fully assembled at the steel construction company SET in Novosibirsk.The final tests of doors were done on December 25, 2020 - a nice Christmas present for PANDA.

The assembly of the yoke octants is aided by a star shaped installation tool. After its removal the octants stayed in place with minimal deviation. All parts are surveyed with a laser tracker employing fixed fiducial marks even during the assembly process which facilitates the whole operation providing much better precision. No mechanical stoppers are used, as their precision would be too low. 

The four doors, two downstream and two upstream, are bolted to the yoke in their closed position. Before opening the doors the bolts are unfastened and the doors are lowered to the sliding rails resting then on heavy weight rollers. The 22t door wings were opened sliding on the rollers with a friction of only about 0.5% - two persons were able to move one wing with a simple manual winch. In the final configuration BINP will equip the doors with hydraulic jacks and actuators, which were not part of the deliverables of SET. Documentation for the completion of the factory acceptance procedure is under way.

The yoke was again disassembled and the parts will be transported to BINP were they will be stored in two halls waiting for the assembly of the complete magnet for testing and field measurements at BINP. The octants and downstream doors will be kept in a climate controlled hall to avoid any unwanted corrosion within the gaps. The outer frame can be stored at simpler conditions.

Currently the cryostat of the superconducting solenoid is in production. At the same time the production of the superconducting wire is in preparation. The assembly of the entire magnet at BINP will take place next year and allow first tests and finally a complete field mapping. For this operation the cryogenic plant of the KEDR magnet at BINP will be employed to provide the necessary supply of liquid Helium for refrigeration.

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