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New Leadership for FACET Project and the Accelerator Design Department

FACET is a planned experimental facility that will provide short, intense pulses of electrons and positrons to enable studies of the critical issues associated with plasma acceleration. The facility uses the first two-thirds of the SLAC linac. Andrei Seryi has been an outstanding and very energetic leader for the project to date and has brought the project from concept to technical maturity in a very brief 6 months. Andrei will be taking a new position as Director of the John Adams Institute in July and a new management team has been put in place to lead the project through completion.

The new team includes Nan Phinney as Project Director, Jose Chan as Project Manager, and John Sheppard as Project Scientist. Nan brings considerable experience from operating the SLAC Linear Collider and managing the laboratory's International Linear Collider research and development program. Jose is a very experienced project manager, most recently for the LCLS undulator system and experimental areas. John has been part of the FACET management team and will continue to provide his significant technical experience and expertise. The rest of Andrei' s strong team will continue to execute and complete the FACET project.

Andrei will head a new Accelerator Research Division Committee on External Collaboration Development providing advice to the ARD on the engagement with external collaborations. He will also continue to provide advice to the new management team during the transition period and, in his new capacity as director of the John Adams Institute, we hope that he will be a long-term collaborator in the FACET science program.

With this transition, Jim Krebs will also be phasing out of the FACET project to return to the BaBar decommissioning and demolition project. Jim brought his enormous experience to FACET at a critical point in developing the project, and his participation was crucial to the progress made.

With her new responsibilities, Nan Phinney will be stepping down as acting head of the ARD Accelerator Design Department. Chris Adolphsen will take over leadership of that department along with his current role as head of the Linac Design Department. Chris has broad experience in accelerator design and will be coordinating work on a wide variety of projects including ILC, Large Hadron Collider, SuperB and support for the Linac Coherent Light Source improvements and LCLS-II upgrades.

—Tor Raubenheimer
  SLAC Today, February 16, 2010