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ATLAS strengthens collaboration with Latin American teams

4 February 2008

The 'ATLAS World'

The ATLAS Collaboration has built up a healthy and lively cooperation with teams from South America. Whereas a group from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) has been an ATLAS Institution for many years from the early calorimeter R&D phase, groups from Argentina, Chile and Colombia joined more recently. The last, formal step in joining the ATLAS Collaboration happened during January for these three countries with the signatures of Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) by the Presidents of their respective Funding Agencies, during a visit tour in Chile and Colombia I had the pleasure to make. Indeed, the ATLAS map of the world shows now proudly a strong presence in South America.

Building up the collaboration with the groups in Argentina, Chile and Colombia was very much boosted by the European Union HELEN project which provides resources for visits and medium-term stays for students and researchers from Latin America at CERN, as well as some visits and tutorial lecture sessions by European physicists in South America. Nick Ellis, the ATLAS HELEN Coordinator, has not only overviewed and guided efficiently the planning for these exchanges, but also motivated and embedded the groups to work on hot ATLAS topics, mainly in the high-level trigger and software/computing areas. Jorge (here more known as George) Mikenberg’s roots in Latin America have further encouraged contacts and exchanges also in detector and engineering matters.

The President of the Chilean Funding Agency (CONICYT), Vivian Heyl, together with Marco Aurelia Diaz and Peter Jenni signing MoUs for Chile

Two teams from Argentina were admitted to the ATLAS Collaboration at the Collaboration Board meeting of February 2006. One is from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, led by Ricardo Piegaia, and the other from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata with Maria Teresa Dova leading the group. ATLAS enjoyed enthusiastic support from the President of their Funding Agency, Lino Barañao, who has now become Minister for Science and Technology for Argentina. But he still found time to sign the M&O MoU two weeks ago.

The joint Chilean team from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Valparaíso, led by Marco Aurelio Díaz and Ivan Schmidt, was welcomed into ATLAS at the October 2007 CB meeting. At the same meeting, the group of Marta Losada from the Universidad Antonio Nariño in Bogotá, Colombia was also admitted as ATLAS Institution.

The President of the Colombian Funding Agency (COLCIENCIAS), Juan Francisco Miranda, between Marta Losada and Peter Jenni. The fourth person on the far left is Hernando Sanchez, Deputy Director for the Science and Technology programmes

Formalization of the MoUs went very quickly for these Institutions: they were signed during my visit to the Funding Agencies of both countries, as witnessed by the two pictures. I was not only enjoying the very friendly hospitality at the three universities and the definitely better weather than in Geneva, but also gave several colloquia talks. It was a really busy, but fruitful tour!

Note that there will be soon in Argentina an ATLAS computing tutorial and workshop gathering, see http://www.df.uba.ar/~aia/atlas_workshop/.

Colin Barras