HEP Supported Workshops & Conferences

Click on a link to the right to learn more about a HEP-supported workshop or conference.

(Links)
Accelerators for America’s Future

Advanced Accelerator Concepts 2010

Undergraduate Women in Physics

 (Click to go to report)

Many of the broader applications of technology originally developed for and by HEP research have been serendipitous. In order to obtain guidance on how to better bridge the gap between accelerator research and technology deployment, HEP organized an accelerator symposium entitled “Accelerators for America’s Future,” held October 26, 2009 (see www.acceleratorsamerica.org for more information). The symposium was followed by a two-day workshop in which more than 100 experts familiar with accelerator needs and requirements met to identify technological and policy issues that if overcome could have transformative impacts in the areas of national security, medicine, energy and environment, industry, and discovery science. They identified the myriad uses that accelerators now support, from isotope production and hadron therapy to shrink-wrap for the food industry, cargo inspection, and nuclear threat reduction monitoring. But they also identified future applications of accelerators, for example, that next-generation electron accelerators could be used to make a greener more sustainable world through flue-gas and water treatment; that accelerator-driven subcritical reactors could provide virtually carbon-free power to the grid and play a major role in nuclear waste transmutation; that developments in superconducting magnets, accelerating structures, and beam transport could have profound impacts on isotope production and hadron therapy; and that compact “fieldable” accelerators that exploit high gradients and beam brightness have a role to play in national security through hazardous material detection and enforcing non-proliferation compliance. These applications will require additional R&D efforts as well as dedicated user and demonstration facilities in order to bear fruit.

Through its accelerator science research program, HEP has a major role to play in advancing the broad beneficial uses of accelerators in society.