Topics

The first Asian Forum for Accelerators and Detectors held in India

February 21, 2012

On February 6 and 7, the first Asian Forum for Accelerators and Detectors (AFAD) was successfully held at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Kolkata, India, with attendance by 125 researchers from Australia, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Taiwan.

The workshop provided a good platform to discuss the collaboration among Asian laboratories; the participants showed great interest in collaborative activities. At the workshop, a proposal for establishing a standing body of contacts from several countries was put forth and accepted. The main objectives of this body are maintaining an uninterrupted exchange among researchers from various countries as well as holding annual meetings.

The idea for AFAD germinated from the Joint Asian Accelerator Work Shop (JAAWS). JAAWS was launched in 2009 as a new initiative to support collaborative activities among Asian accelerator-based laboratories in the fields of accelerator-related technology development. To ensure constant and sustainable discussions and collaborative activities among Asian laboratories, AFAD was launched with an additional category, Network and Computing. AFAD has more participants, countries, and rejion as compared to JAAWS.

At the plenary session on the first day, Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission & Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, delivered the inaugural address. Next, Dr. Bikash Sinha, the former director of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), gave the presentation entitled “India: From CERN, RHIC, FAIR, TRIUMPH … To Asia and the whole World,” explaining the collaboration between Indian laboratories and those from around the world.

Following the plenary session, 6 parallel sessions were held: Photon science, Hadron (neutron) science, Detector R&D, Medical and industrial applications, Innovative accelerators, and Network and computing. In the concluding session, held on February 7, conveners from each parallel session summarized the discussion and proposed future activities, including collaboration toward the upgrade of the Indus accelerator to Indus-2.