ATLAS e-News

2009 was great, but 2010 should be terrific!

13 January 2010

The 2009 festive season was especially festive at CERN: Almost a solid month of data-taking was a better Christmas present than anyone had dared wish for. ATLAS e-News took a moment with ATLAS Spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti this week, to pause and contemplate all that has happened and all that is yet to come…

“The Collaboration gave me the chance of being Spokesperson during a very exciting phase,” says Fabiola of the new office, which she took up in March 2009. “It’s a big honour and a big responsibility.” Physics aside, she feels especially proud of the collaborative mood displayed in  ATLAS: “Not only are there excellent scientists from all over the world, but there is also a good team spirit, as we saw in particular during the last few weeks of 2009, where everybody was involved in a harmonised way.”

The biggest challenge for the Collaboration since March, she says, has been to ensure that all the components in the chain – from data-taking in the pit to calibration and alignment, software and computing and physics analysis– are running smoothly, and that the interfaces between these components are as close to perfect as possible.

She has absolutely no hesitation when questioned about the most gratifying thing that has occurred during her first year in office: “Seeing ATLAS efficiently collect first data and produce beautiful preliminary results, which will be consolidated and expanded soon!” That the full experiment is able to deliver like this, and in a short timescale, bodes well for the coming year.

Looking ahead, Fabiola’s priority for the Collaboration now is to “learn as much as possible from the data collected at the end of 2009, in order to prepare the experiment in the best possible way to the next phase: taking and analysing higher-energy data.”

“We’ve started in a very successful way. We know that this is going to be an extremely exciting and wonderful year, but it is also going to be very demanding and very challenging. We are facing a long run, and we’ll have to produce physics results continuously and in a timely way, which will require commitment and dedication from everybody in the collaboration.”

On that note, it is imperative that each and every collaborator contributes to so-called ‘service work’ for the experiment in order that everyone then gets to devote some of their time to the more glamorous pursuit of physics. “Everyone should ask themselves: ‘What can I do to help?’,” is Fabiola’s advice.

Fabiola’s grandmother’s advice is also coming in to play, as she considers the competition from the other LHC experiments: “She used to say, ‘Try to learn from the others if they look like they’re doing better, but also have your personality if you think your principles and goals are the right ones.” ATLAS’s task will be to keep half an eye on what the others are up to, without losing sight of or compromising on the Collaboration’s own goals and standards. The key will be balancing the need for timely delivery of results with the desire to ensure those results are rigorous.

We have a positive person at the helm, you’ll be happy to hear, who doesn’t hold any particular fears about the year ahead. “If we’re focussed, work well together and the LHC works well, we’re going to have a wonderful year,” she smiles, reporting her three wishes for 2010: “To take wonderful data at the highest possible energy, to produce a huge amount of nice results, and to give our young colleagues the opportunity of blossoming and the chance to appreciate what serious scientific work in the data-taking era means.”

It’s a safe bet that these are dreams that the whole collaboration shares. Time to get cracking on this scientific adventure and make those dreams a reality!

Ceri Perkins ATLAS e-NEWS