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Prof. Dr. Volker Metag (Photo: Justus Liebig University Gießen) can be regarded as one of the fathers of FAIR and of the future antiproton facility as part of FAIR which we know now as HESR and PANDA for the storage ring and the experiment respectively.

As the former Research Director of GSI, he started already in the middle of the 1990s to shape the eventual future of GSI after SIS18 went in operation. He initiated a couple of working groups, where one of them was dealing with hadron physics, a completely new field at GSI. The first milestone was a “Letter of Intent for a Glue/Charm Factory” in 1999, followed by a “Conceptional Design Report” for the whole facility which was the basis for an evaluation in 2001 and finally the decision in 2003 by the German Science Council (Deutscher Wissenschaftsrat) to realize the project which later got the name FAIR.

In recognition of his engagement and achievements, the PANDA collaboration awarded to him the "PANDA Honorary Lifetime Membership" for his "Outstanding Service to the PANDA Collaboration and the Field of Hadron Physics".

The certificate and the medal were presented by the PANDA Spokesperson on May 28, 2018 at the Festive Colloquium for his 75th Birthday being held at that day at the Justus Liebig University Gießen. The colloquium was presented by Ulrike Thoma (University Bonn) and the laudatory speech was given by Wolfgang Kühn (University Gießen). Both have been working with Volker Metag for a long time in a variety of projects.

Call for Nominations

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

Who is eligible?
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, 2017 to May 31, 2018.

And how can nominations be made?
A nomination can be made until July 31, 2018 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.)

More details of the PhD Prize rules can be found here.

The nomination must be made in writing/email.

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

A list of all laureates of the PANDA PhD Prize is provided on our site.

In 2017 the 1st PANDA Photo Contest took place and the winners in the three categories have been presented during our Collaboration Meeting in Novosibirsk.

If you like you can have a look at a gallery with all contributions.

...and the prize goes to....

Category 1: Detector Photo

"Crystal Test Array" from Dmitry Khaneft & David Rodríguez Piñeiro (both HI Mainz)

shows a test array of Lead-Tungstate crystals for the backward end cap of the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter.

Feel free to read more about the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter and its function for the experiment.

Category 2: Fun of Research

"Woman at work“ from Daniel Bonaventura, Universität Münster (c) AG Khoukaz, Institut für Kernphysik, WWU Münster

shows Silke Grieser from Universität Münster working on pumps of the cluster-jet target prototype of the PANDA experiment.

There is more information available about the PANDA target system.

Category 3: Artwork

"STT by Night“ from Jülich Photo Shooting Team, FZ Jülich (c) Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH

shows a model of the Straw Tube Tracker for charged particle tracking in PANDA with interesting lighting.

The STT is an essential part of the PANDA tracking system.