Director General of CERN group photograph. Credit Andy Collins STFC
The University of Liverpool, the lead partner in the Cockcroft Institute collaborative partnership of universities, research councils and industry, honoured Prof. Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, on July 19, 2011 with a honorary Doctor of Science Degree ( Honoris Causa) in a graduation ceremony in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall followed by a gala dinner in St. George’s Hall in Liverpool on July 20, 2011 along with other distinguished honorary graduates. Prof. Heuer was joined by the distinguished particle and accelerator physics faculty at Liverpool during the ceremony in celebration of the event. Prof. Heuer, upon invitation from Prof. Swapan Chattopadhyay, Director of the Cockcroft Institute and Sir John Cockcroft Chair of Physics, took the morning of July 20, 2011 off from his sight-seeing activities and other engagements in Liverpool to visit the Cockcroft Institute at Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus and toured the major research facilities on campus: the “Vacuum and Surface Science Laboratory” with Joe Herbert (ASTeC/Cockcroft); the “RF and Diagnostics Laboratory” with Peter McIntosh (ASTeC/Cockcroft) and Carsten Welsch (Liverpool/Cockcroft); ALICE and EMMA, hosted by Susan Smith (Director of ASTeC in the Cockcroft Institute); and finally the Engineering and Technology Centre facilities and various assemblies there such as the clean room for superconducting radiofrequency cavities and cryomodules, insertion device and magnet stands for CLIC and various other shop facilities, hosted by Neil Bliss (Daresbury Lab/Cockcroft) and James Clarke (ASTeC/Cockcroft). In the photograph above, scientists and engineers at the Cockcroft Institute and Daresbury Lab share their time in the ALICE Control Room (from left to right: Neil Thompson, Neil Bliss, Susan Smith, Swapan Chattopadhyay, Prof. Heuer, Peter McIntosh, Andy Smith and Carsten Welsch ). The visit of the Cockcroft Institute by Prof. Rolf Heuer testifies the emerging collaborations and growing strong links between Europe’s and World’s largest collaborative scientific laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland and the accelerator science and technology enterprise in the northwest of UK.