Dan-Olof Riska
A major development in 2008 at the Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP) was the joining of Tampere University of Technology as an operating partner of the Institute in addition to our previous partners, the Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä and Helsinki and Lappeenranta Universities of Technology. Another major event was the beginning of the construction of a "Tier-2" Grid computing facility as a joint effort of HIP and the Finnish IT Center for Science, CSC. The Tier-2 facility forms part of the CERN Worldwide LHC Grid computing project WLCG. A third related major event was the well publicized first start-up of the Large Hadron Collider LHC and the beginning of data collection at the ALICE and CMS detectors at CERN in September.
HIP's main mandate of the Finnish Ministry of Education is the co-ordination of the collaboration between CERN and Finland. The second mandate is the planning and construction of the Finnish contribution to the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research FAIR, whose construction will begin in Darmstadt in 2009. The realization of these mandates is done in close collaboration with the Finpro association, which co-ordinates the collaboration between the international accelerator laboratories and Finnish industry.
The modus operandi of the Institute is to carry out such research projects in theoretical physics and in accelerator based research and associated technology development, which are too resource intensive or too cross disciplinary to fit into the standard framework of academic research funding in Finland. An important task of the Institute is to support the research and teaching departments in its member universities by means of joint research projects and by graduate training in ongoing research. An example of the success of this collaboration is the fact that 19 project leaders and researchers of the Institute have been appointed to professorial positions at several different universities both in Finland and abroad.
The research activities of the Helsinki Institute of Physics in 2008 fell into 5 research programmes and 2 special research projects. The research programmes are (1) the Theory Programme, (2) the High Energy Physics Programme, (3) the CMS Programme, (4) the Nuclear Matter Programme and (5) the Technology Programme. The special projects are (a) the CLOUD experiment project at CERN, which aims at the determination of the role of cosmic radiation in climate warming and (b) the Planck project for the analysis of the data from the Planck satellite, which will be launched in 2009. At the beginning of 2008 the Theory Programme began 5 new projects: (1) Cosmophysics, (2) Laws of nature and condensed particle matter phenomenology at LHC, (3) Low-dimensional quantum systems (4) String theory and mathematical physics and (5) Radiation damage in particle accelerator materials. The last one of these is related to the HIP engagement in the development project for the future CLIC collider at CERN.
The High Energy Physics Programme continued its projects for detector construction for forward proton-proton physics study in the TOTEM experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the study of top quark physics by proton-antiproton collisions at the CDF-II experiment at the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The engagement in accelerating structures study for the future CLIC accelerator project complements the theory project on microscopic simulation of surface RF breakdown phenomena.
The CMS Programme continued in two projects: one for the commissioning and operation of the tracker and the trigger of the CMS detector at the LHC and the other for software development for the CMS data analysis and Monte Carlo studies of the discovery potential of CMS. The Institute welcomed Professor Paula Eerola as a new senior member in this programme in September.
The Nuclear Matter Programme of the Institute was divided into two projects. The first is a nuclear structure research project at the ISOLDE facility at CERN. The second is a project for physics analysis at, and instrumentation for the ALICE detector for relativistic heavy ion collisions at the LHC. In addition the Programme contained a special project for the planning of the Finnish contribution to the FAIR project. In 2008 HIP joined the NuPNET network for nuclear research as the Finnish partner.
The Technology Programme of the Institute continues the development of industrial applications of CERN generated innovations. During 2008 one focus of the Programme was on software development for distributed data-intensive Grid computation. The Programme is a member of the European Union funded Enabling Grids for E-sciencE project. The Programme is responsible for the construction of the Tier-2 Grid computing facility. During the year the project participated in the CMS data transfer effort, which has transferred more than 25 TBs of data between different Tier-1 centres and the transfer links to the Finnish Tier-2 centre. The Finnish Tier-2 centre has also been part of the ALICE Tier-1 network.
The Institute has continued its strong efforts in training graduate students for frontline research. This activity is supported in part by the national graduate school programmes. The graduate training efforts were greatly strengthened by generous grants by several Finnish foundations. During 2008 new record numbers of both PhD and DSc degrees (11) and MSc and MSc (engineering) degrees (17) were awarded on the basis of research conducted within the research projects of the Institute.
The summer student programme at CERN represents a key educational effort. During the summer of 2008, 14 Finnish students worked at CERN in HIP research programmes. The science education sessions for Finnish high schools at CERN represent a significant outreach activity. In 2008 the Institute hosted 15 study "camps" by Finnish high school students and 2 training sessions for teachers in Finnish gymnasiums at CERN.
The Institute continued its active engagement both in research and administration at CERN. Our Director served as a delegate to CERN Council and as a member of the Governing Board of the CERN Pension Fund. Juha Äystö served as a member of the CERN Scientific Policy Committee. At the end of the year the personnel secretary at the HIP office at CERN, Ms Marika Flygar, took up the position as assistant to the Director General of CERN. The Institute remains indebted to her for outstanding service for over more than a decade.
During 2008 the Board of HIP was chaired by Vice Rector Johanna Björkroth of the University of Helsinki. The scientific activities of the Institute were overseen by an international scientific advisory board, which was chaired by Dr. Wolf-Dieter Schlatter of CERN.