News

21st June, 2019, Prof. Tom Browder (University of Hawaii) turned over the role of the Belle II spokesperson to Prof. Toru Iijima (Nagoya University). Prof. Browder has led the Belle II experiment since 2013 when the Belle II experiment began its upgrade, and watched over the start of the Belle II physics run (Phase3).

 

A ceremony for the spokesperson transition was held on the last day of the June 2019 Belle II General Meeting (B2GM). The B2GM is a regular meeting of the entire Belle II Collaboration and is held on the Tsukuba campus of KEK. In the ceremony, Prof. Browder entered the Kobayashi Hall and passed the “sacred fire” torch to Prof. Iijima.

Prof. Browder looked back over his six years as spokesperson and commented that “I feel very lucky and grateful to have worked with some of the most talented students, postdocs, engineers, professors in the world of high energy physics. I wish Prof. Iijima the best in these very challenging times ahead”.

Prof. Iijima, the collaboration’s third spokesperson, said, “the next two years are very important. The performance of the SuperKEKB accelerator has been improving, so we must get data more effectively and stably. In addition, we would like to compete with the LHCb experiment at CERN and produce better results. I am going to make great efforts to achieve good results.”