The 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC’21) was organized by the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), Campinas (Brazil), and took place from 24 to 28 May. It is the main international event for the worldwide accelerator community and industry. Attendees are presented with cutting-edge accelerator research and development results and gain the latest insights into accelerator facilities across the globe.
For the first time in its history IPAC was held entirely online, bringing both new benefits and challenges to those attending with pre-recorded poster presentations and hundreds of concurrent Zoom rooms during the conference. This edition attracted over 1,500 delegates to present and discuss the latest R&D results in accelerator science.
A strong delegation of the Cockcroft Institute (CI) attended the event and contributed to the scientific program. This included over 30 posters, several talks and a dedicated online stand in the virtual exhibition area.
Lancaster University had an invited talk in the Accelerator technology session by Alejandro Castilla focussed on the development of 36 GHz accelerating structures for use as beam linearisers in FELs. In the same session Nick Shipman, who is now re-joining Cockcroft after a 2 year hiatus at CERN, also had an invited talk on ferroelectric fast reactive tuners that will allow SRF cavities to operate at much higher efficiencies.
A contributed talk by PhD student Bianca Veglia from the University of Liverpool, who is also a Fellow in the pan European AVA network, focused on the effect of electron beam velocity distribution on electron-cooling at the Extra Low Energy Antiproton (ELENA) ring. On the final day of the conference, during a session on Beam Instrumentation, Dr Joseph Wolfenden from the University of Liverpool delivered a talk on “Gas Jet In-Vivo Dosimetry for Particle Beam Therapy”.
The Cockcroft Institute/University of Liverpool also obtained a high visibility at the virtual industry exhibition. Throughout the week, Project Managers Dr Theun van Veen, Dr Ricardo Torres and Business Developer Constantinos Astreos, members of the QUASAR Group’s Project T.E.A.M., based at Daresbury, met with delegates and industry partners to promote the group’s principle activities in accelerator research and the many European Collaborations that the CI is either coordinating or contributing to as a partner.
The spin-out company D-Beam, specialized in advanced beam diagnostics, and the Project T.E.A.M. were also well represented at the exhibition stand through a dedicated video, leaflets and selected images outlining their expertise and strengths.
Finally, the IPAC conference was used to announce and promote the LINAC2022 conference, which will take place in Liverpool between 28 August – 2 September 2022.
More information: