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Lyn Evans appointed as Linear Collider Director

June 21, 2012

International Committee for Future Accelerators(ICFA)

The international effort to design the world’s next major particle collider has a new leader. Today the International Committee for Future Accelerators announced the appointment of CERN's Lyn Evans as the new Linear Collider Director. Evans is the first to hold the new position, which will lead the Linear Collider organization created to bring two existing large-scale linear collider programs under one governance. He will be based at CERN.

For several years, the world’s particle physics community has been developing proposals for two different accelerators - the International Linear Collider, ILC, and the Compact Linear Collider, CLIC. Evans will lead the effort to unify these programs and will represent the combined effort to the worldwide science community and funding agencies.

"The international particle physics community is fortunate to have Lyn at the helm of this new organization," said ICFA chair and Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. "He brings tremendous experience to the position, having led the construction of the Large Hadron Collider that is already exceeding performance expectations after only a short time in operation."

A future linear collider would complement the discoveries made at CERN's Large Hadron Collider by colliding electrons and positrons to further probe the fundamental nature of matter.

The International Linear Collider is designed to collide particles to between 0.5 and 1 teraelectronvolts. It uses cold, superconducting structures to accelerate the particle beams. The program is being led by the ILC Global Design Effort, with governance shared among multiple countries around the world. Next year it delivers its technical design to ICFA, signaling that the machine is in principle ready to be built.

CLIC uses warm, normal-conducting technology in a novel two-beam system to accelerate particles to between 0.5 and 3 TeV. CLIC is an international collaboration initiated by CERN. It is a new technology at the conceptual design phase of development.

Recently the two projects have been collaborating on technological issues that are common to both. The new leadership role unifies the two efforts, providing direction for research and development on both accelerator technologies.

"Now that the LHC is producing physics, it is time for the linear collider community to take the next step," said Jonathan Bagger, chair of the ILC Steering Committee. "This new organization will facilitate that process, and prepare the way for a single linear collider proposal based on the LHC results."

Evans brings a wealth of technological and leadership experience to the position, most recently leading the construction of the LHC. In his new role, he will work with three associate directors, one for each of the ILC, CLIC and the associated detectors.

"This new structure for Linear Collider development is a strong signal of the globally integrated nature of particle physics," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. "It is clear that any future energy-frontier facility will be a global project from the outset, and this is an important step on the way."

The appointment of the Linear Collider Director followed an ICFA review of candidates nominated by members of the American, Asian and European particle physics community. Now that Evans is appointed, he and ICFA members will discuss the associate director appointments at next month’s ICHEP meeting in Melbourne.

"We expect Lyn will ably lead the way in developing a reliable, viable proposal for a future linear collider," said previous ICFA Chair and KEK Director Atsuto Suzuki. "We express our appreciation to the Global Design Effort and the ILC Research Directorate for completing the ILC technical design. With that milestone quickly approaching, we look forward to advancing to the next stage of the linear collider."