Support for leadership of the ATLAS-UK Upgrade project

FAO of Tony Medland, Particle Physics

This grant will support a buy-out from University duties to allow Buttar to spend additional time on the management of the current ATLAS-UK Upgrade project.

The LHC story has captured the public's imagination, as they have followed the drama of the first collisions, the LHC accident and then the successful running culminating in the first hints of the Higgs boson. This has raised the awareness of science and contributed to the increasing number of students entering University to study Physics. ATLAS-UK has played a central role in the dissemination of LHC results to the wider community through working with media, visits to schools and supporting school visits to CERN, as well as inviting MPs and Ministers to visit CERN.
The training of students and young researchers in experimental particle physics is second to none, and provides a workforce that is skilled in a range of disciplines critical to a knowledge-based economy: software, engineering, project management, data analysis - and is capable of working in a highly competitive international environment.
During the development and construction of the Upgrade, ATLAS-UK is seeking to promote UK industry wherever this is appropriate.
The tracker upgrade has worked with UK companies such as Micron Semiconductor Ltd, Stevenage Circuits Group Ltd and Hawk Electronics Ltd that are already established within Particle Physics, to position them to be able to bid to provide elements of the Upgrade.
There has also been collaboration with Draka (part of the Prismian group) in the development of suitable radiation hard, high bandwidth fibres for use at the HL-LHC. This is a hostile environment for fibres as the radiation doses are very large, up to ~ 500 kGy(Si)
Draka hopes to sell these fibres to LHC experiments and accelerator but there is also a wider market for fibres in Nuclear plants, for fusion research (ITER) and for the military (see http://communications.draka.com/sites/eu/News/Super-RadHard-Fibres.aspx).
The ATLAS UK computing and software upgrade activity is already working in collaboration with Nvidia, Dell and Intel on the required developments in software and in the use of hardware as the architectures evolve. Clark (Edinburgh) and Jones (Lancaster) are part of the NVidia 'Fellows' programme, and our work has been presented at their users forum in San Diego. Through Dell, we are offered limited access to new hardware for benchmarking and direct contact with the Intel developers. For all these companies, ATLAS is seen as a test case for ideas and also students/RAs will be getting training in the very latest computing & software methods at a time when this area is undergoing some fundamental changes. ATLAS is regarded as a technically sophisticated community with interesting challenges that often characterize much of the commercial marker needs four years or more hence, often more accurately than specialist HPC applications. Their subsequent optimization of hardware for our needs then gives downstream benefit to the economy.