The 15th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC’24) was held as a fully in-person event from 19 – 24May 2024 at the Music City Centre located in the heart of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The event gathered over 1,200 delegates and 100 industrial partners to discuss the latest advances in accelerator science through an intense programme of talks and poster sessions together with an industry exhibition. The conference was co-hosted by Oak Ridge and Brookhaven National Laboratories.
Almost a dozen members of the Cockcroft Institute attended this key event for the accelerator community and contributed to the scientific programme with around 40, either in person or by proxy, showing their latest results across beam characterization, novel acceleration schemes, data science, medical applications and antimatter research.
PhD students Lauryn Eley, Andrea Fornara, Alessandro Frasca, Beatriz Higuera Gonzalez, Connor Monaghan and Oliver Stringer were amongst the Cockcroft Institute’s members who attended the conference in person to present their research work. A particular highlight was Oliver’s excellent presentation on “First measurement of the proton beam and lead ion beam in the LHC using beam gas curtain monitor” where he discussed the results from measurements in the LHC the group conducted with its research partners from CERN and GSI.
Peter McIntosh (STFC) attended as the IPAC’26 Organising Committee Chair. He moderated Accelerator Technology and Sustainability session on Monday.
On Tuesday, Carsten P Welsch (University of Liverpool) alongside colleagues from Jefferson Laboratory (USA) and Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA) hosted the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) Accelerator Collaboration kick-off meeting. He was also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of IPAC’24 and chaired a well-attended session on future colliders on the Wednesday.
Eleni Marshall (STFC) contributed an oral presentation on “Lifetime of non-evaporable getter thin films over repeated activation”. She presented the results from a study investigating the limits of NEG lifetimes, looking at the effect of multiple activations on the same coating.
Graeme Burt (Lancaster University) contributed as a co-author on one of the three closing talks “High-efficiency klystrons from a dream to a reality” by Nuria Catalan Lasheras at CERN.
Cockcroft Institute also hosted a booth as part of the industry exhibition to distribute latest news on large-scales projects as well as the R&D carried out at the Institute.
Finally, Narender Kumar (University of Liverpool) contributed to the conference as a member of the editorial team, assisting the authors of IPAC’24 in producing high-quality conference proceedings. Narender will lead the editorial work for 14th International Beam Conference (IBIC), which will be hosted in Liverpool in September 2025. IBIC2025 will be jointly hosted by STFC, the John Adams Institute and the Cockcroft Institute.
A huge Thank you to all members of Cockcroft Institute who contributed to the preparation, review and presentation of the institute’s research at this flagship conference!