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The First Asia-Europe-Pacific School of High-Energy Physics held in Fukuoka

November 27, 2012

The first Asia-Europe-Pacific School of High-Energy Physics (AEPSHEP) was held from October 14 to 27 in Fukuoka, Japan. The school is jointly organized by High –Energy Physics communities in Asia, Europe, and Pacific area, and supported by major accelerator laboratories, CERN and KEK in particular, and relevant universities in these areas. The AEPSHEP2012 was hosted by KEK, Kyushu University, and Saga University, and sponsored by the supporting institutes and Fukuoka prefecture, and Fukuoka Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The purpose of the school is to provide young physicists with an opportunity to learn about recent advances in elementary-particle physics from world-leading researchers. The school also aims to encourage communication among young researchers from Asia, Europe, and the Pacific.

More than 80 promising students from 21 countries and regions (namely Australia, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong-Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, based on the country/region of their home institutes) participated in the school.

The programme of the school included plenary lecture sessions, discussion sessions, a student poster session, a student project presentation session, social events, and excursions.

The course consisted of a total of 34 lectures. Atsuto Suzuki, Director General of KEK; Rolf Heuer, Director-General of CERN; and prominent researchers conducted lectures on High-Energy Physics from an experimental and phenomenological perspective, with a focus on accelerator-based programmes in Asia and Europe, and related fields such as astro-particle physics and cosmological aspects of particle physics. The lectures were complemented by discussion sessions. The students were divided into six groups, and remained with the discussion group for the duration of the school. The discussion leaders followed up each lecture with supervised collaborative projects for their own discussion group.

Hiroshi Ogawa, Governor of Fukuoka Prefecture, and Setsuo Arikawa, President of Kyushu University, presented welcome remarks at the reception party held on October 15. They encouraged the young researchers and graduate students attending this school to enthusiastically discuss the new developments in the field of high-energy physics, and to participate in beneficial exchanges in both academic and personal endeavours during the school.

At the evening poster session, all students were invited to present posters, and 32 of them presented their own research work to the other participants. The posters covered an impressively broad range of topics and experiments. This session started at 8 pm and continued beyond midnight. It was very successful, and the students enjoyed discussing particle physics and their own research activities with each other and with the academic staff of the school.

A highlight of AEPSHEP2012 was the student project presentation session held on October 25, led by John Ellis, Clerk Maxwell Professor, Kings College London and Professor, CERN. The students were divided into six groups consisting of about 14 students from different countries and backgrounds. Each group undertook a collaborative project to study in detail the analysis described in a published experimental paper. Each group put in a lot of effort to carry out the study and prepare the presentation. A student representative of each group presented a summary of the group’s learnings. The six presentations were well prepared and impressive.

The school was successfully concluded, and it provided a valuable experience for students to make new friends and establish contacts with researchers from all over the world for their future careers.