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GLAST Management Visits
Italy
By Lowell Klaisner
SLAC Director
Jonathan Dorfan and GLAST/LAT Project Manager Lowell Klaisner visited
INFN in Pisa, Italy in July. They met with the team working on the GLAST
Silicon Tracker in the morning and toured their facilities. Dorfan met
with the BABAR
collaborators in the afternoon and then visited the facility where INFN
is building the silicon vertex detector for CMS at CERN. They also met
with Rino Castaldi, Director of INFN-PISA, and expressed their
appreciation for this support and for the importance of the
collaboration between INFN-Pisa and SLAC. INFN is an important
collaborator on the GLAST project and to preparations for doing science
with the instrument. The Tracker is a modular design of 16 individual
towers, each with 19 layers of silicon. The design was a collaboration
of INFN, UCSC and SLAC, and is being fabricated and tested at many INFN
institutions and aerospace companies in Italy. The Italian space agency
(ASI) and INFN are funding this work similar to NASA and DOE funding the
GLAST/LAT work in the U.S.
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Collaborating on the project
(left to right) Ronaldo Bellazzini (GLAST/INFN), Tracker Project
Manager in Italy, Jonathan Dorfan (DO) and graduate student
Nicola Omodei (INFN-Pisa) discuss prospects for GLAST science.
(Photo by Diana Rogers) |
The final assembly is
being executed in a large, well-equipped clean room at INFN-Pisa.
Ronaldo Bellazzini (BABAR/INFN)
is managing GLAST activities in Italy. INFN recently completed testing
of the over 11,000 silicon tiles, and will deliver the first flight
tower to SLAC by this September.
Dorfan commented on the
number and quality of people working on GLAST at INFN. Many young
people have joined the effort. Recently, the engineering staff was
expanded by drawing people from the University of Pisa School of
Aerospace Engineering. In addition to their contribution to the
Tracker, the INFN group has contributed to the GLAST Science Analysis
Software and to the design of the first data challenge.
INFN has developed
strong expertise in the design and fabrication of silicon detectors.
They collaborated on the
BABAR
silicon vertex detector and have now extrapolated that experience to CMS
and GLAST. With GLAST, INFN has joined SLAC’s new initiatives in
astrophysics. |
