Dan-Olof Riska
The Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP) is a national Finnish institute for physics research and physics related technology development, which since the beginning of the year 2002 has been operated jointly by the Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä and the Helsinki University of Technology. The main component of the mandate of HIP is responsibility for Finnish research at CERN.
The operating principle of the Institute is to carry out time limited significant research projects that are either too resource intensive or too cross disciplinary or novel to fit into the standard framework of academic research funding. An important goal of the Institute is to support the research and teaching departments in its member universities by means of joint research projects and by graduate training within its research projects. An example of this collaboration is the fact that 8 project leaders and researchers in the research projects of the Institute have in the past 5 years been appointed to professorial positions at several different universities.
The research activities at HIP fall into 5 separate research programmes: (1) the "Theory Programme", (2) the "High Energy Physics Programme", (3) the "CMS Programme", (4) the "Nuclear Matter Programme" and (5) the "Technology Programme".
The Theory Programme serves as a Finnish project oriented national institute for theoretical physics. Three new theory projects were started at the beginning of 2002. These projects concern (1) string theory and quantum field theory, (2) the physics of biological systems and (3) the theory of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. During the year the earlier highly successful project on statistical physics and materials science was brought to completion. The projects on cosmology and particle physics phenomenology continue and will be reviewed during the year 2003 for possible continuation for a further 3-year period.
During the year, the High Energy Physics Programme continued its projects for detector development for forward proton-proton physics study at the LHC at CERN and at the CDF-II experiment at the Tevatron accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The collaboration between HIP and the Low Temperature Laboratory in the ongoing COMPASS experiment at CERN continued during 2002 both in target operation and off-line physics analysis. The analysis of the data accumulated by the completed DELPHI experiment at the previous LEP collider at CERN continued. Finally the High Energy Physics Programme continued to operate the Detector Laboratory of HIP on behalf of all the experimental programmes of HIP.
At the beginning of 2002 the former LHC Programme of the Institute was separated into two programmes. The first of these, the CMS Programme, is formed of two projects: one for the development of the tracker of the CMS detector at the LHC and the other for software development for the CMS data analysis.
The second of the two separate programmes, the Nuclear Matter Programme, is divided into a low energy nuclear physics project at the ISOLDE facility at CERN and a project for instrumentation for the ALICE detector for relativistic heavy ion collisions at the LHC.
During the year the Institute joined the LHC Computing Grid project at CERN for the establishment of the distributed computing capacity that will be required for the analysis of the data acquired by the LHC detectors.
The Technology Programme of the Institute aims at developing industrial applications of CERN generated innovations in technology. During 2002 the focus of the Technology Programme was on software development for distributed data-intensive grid computation. The Technology Programme hosted sabbatical visits by professor Francois Grey of the Danish Microelectronics Center and professor Erkko Autio of the Helsinki University of Technology.
The Institute has continued its active promotion of graduate student training in frontline research. This activity is supported both by the research projects themselves, and by the national graduate school programmes. The graduate training efforts were greatly strengthened by generous grants by several Finnish foundations, first and foremost by the Magnus Ehrnrooth Foundation. During 2002 6 PhD and DSc degrees and 9 MA and MSc degrees were awarded on the basis of research conducted within the research projects of the Institute.
The summer student programme at CERN continues to be a highly significant component of the educational efforts of the Institute. The Institute continued its support of the "Open Learning Environment" project of the Tampere University of Technology, which has mainly been funded by the National Technology Agency, TEKES. During the year the Institute hosted 10 visits by groups of students in Finnish high schools to CERN.
During the year 2002 the Academy of Finland (the Finnish state agency for research funding) appointed a working group to draft a national strategy for the Finnish collaboration with CERN. This strategy spells out the goals of the research that HIP conducts at CERN, and defines the role of the CERNTECH project of the National Technology Agency TEKES for collaboration between Finnish industry and CERN. The CERNTECH project, which has been extraordinarily successful during the past few years, is carried out in close collaboration with HIP.
HIP was governed by a tripartite board appointed by the universities that operate the Institute. The board has been chaired by Vice Rector Ilkka Niiniluoto of the University of Helsinki. The scientific activities of the Institute were overseen by an international Scientific Advisory Board, which was chaired by Professor Hans Falk Hoffmann, Director of Scientific computing and technology transfer at CERN.