We have the pleasure to announce the awardees of this years Outstanding Achievement Awards for accomplishments in 2019: This years prize will be awarded in two categories "PANDA Physics Analysis" and "Hardware Contributions to PANDA":
The prize in the category "Hardware Contributions to PANDA" goes to Andrey Ryazantsev, Valery Ferapontov, Andrey Levin, Vasiliy Mochalov, Igor Shein and Alexander Vasiliev (IHEP, Protvino / Russia) for their excellent work on the first of series slice for the PANDA Barrel EMC. This major milestone of the collaboration was achieved with tremendous skill and effort.
The prize in the category "Physics Analysis" goes to Klaus Götzen, Ralf Kliemt and Frank Nerling (GSI, HI Mainz and U Frankfurt / Germany) for their excellent work on the PANDA physics program for a very detailed feasibility study of the line-scan capabilities of PANDA. This has set very high standards for treating all systematic errors correctly and is beyond the state in PANDA so far.
The award was presented by the spokesman of the Panda Collaboration, Klaus Peters from GSI, at the most recent Panda Collaboration meeting at GSI in Darmstadt. Her doctoral advisor was Prof. Dr. Alfons Khoukaz from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster.
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 Silke Grieser studied various aspects of Cluster Jets in order to produce an abundant number of exotic particles within the Panda detector, which is being built at the FAIR accelerator facility.
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 Collaboration awards the PhD Prize to specifically honor students’ contributions to the Panda project.
A vibrant GlueX-PANDA workshop with more than 30 participants (a dozen from PANDA) took place at the Virgina GWU Campus in Ashburn, USA. Three intense days with overviews of the respective detectors as well as in-depth topical sessions on computing and analysis focussing on many aspects of potential cooperation. We identified a lot of synergies in the fields of Machine Learning, PWA, Analysis framework, and Education where we will cooperate closer. We will follow-up on this in the near future e.g. with hands-on workshops and concrete work.
It is worth mentioning that in addition there is joint interest in DIRC and PWO-EMC which are partly already on-going.
Prizes for outstanding achievements in 2017/18 to the benefit of PANDA have been awarded to three groups recently.
Alaa Dbeyssi, Manuel Zambrana, and Iris Zimmermann from the Helmholtz Institute Mainz have been awarded for their PANDA Physics Achievements Concerning EM Probes
The group has continuously driven the simulations of form factor studies using electromagnetic probes. The group has successfully implemented the formalism to investigate the electromagnetic structure of the proton in the time-like region including the development of radiative corrections and techniques to suppress backgrounds.
Their published results were based on detailed Monte Carlo simulations and clearly outlined the capability of PANDA to measure the electric and magnetic form factor at the various phases of the experiment.
Pawel Marciniewski, Filza Saleem, and Peter Schakel from Uppsala University have been awarded for the Design and Production of the Forward Endcap SADCs
Pawel Marciniewski (Uppsala University) has been responsible for the timely production of the sampling-ADCs for the readout of the forward endcap EM-calorimeter. Through excellent preparation and foresight, they very successfully produced all 250 boards at the Uppsala University. This is an essential component to bring the forward endcap of the EMC into operation during the upcoming tests.
Daniel Bonaventura, Silke Grieser, Benjamin Hetz, and Alfons Khoukaz from University of Münster have been awarded for the Achievement of World Record Cluster Target Densities
The group has made remarkable achievements with their development of the Cluster Target. By attaining densities of 4x1015/cm for a nozzle over 2m away from the interaction point, they have set a world record and exceeded the PANDA requirements. This excellent target performance will enable a significant rise of the luminosity available at the experiment and thus all physics pillars within PANDA will benefit from it.
- "Design and construction of mechanical structures for substitute tracking modules in the PANDA Forward Spectrometer",
- "Detector Control System for Forward Tracker and GEM",
- "Software Trigger Development using Machine Learning"
The expression of intention was signed in Krabi/Thailand during the PANDA Collaboration Meeting on March 11, 2019. Pictures are from the Signing Cermony among the three group leaders Chinorat Kobdaj (SUT), Keerati Manasatitpong (SLRI), and Sakhorn Rimjaem (CMU) of the Thailand groups involved and Klaus Peters as spokesperson of PANDA.