Dan-Olof Riska
The Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP) is a national Finnish institute for research in physics and physics related technology development. The Institute is operated jointly by the Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä and the Helsinki University of Technology. The Institute has a mandate from the Finnish Ministry of Education for co-ordinating the Finnish research at CERN.
The modus operandi 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 these research projects. An example of the success of this collaboration is the fact that 10 project leaders and researchers of the Institute have in the past 5 years been appointed to professorial positions at several different universities.
During the year 2003 the research activities at HIP fell 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 2003 the earlier highly successful project on laser physics and quantum optics was brought to completion. The projects on cosmology and particle physics phenomenology, which were reviewed during the year and received high marks, were subsequently granted continuation for a second 3-year period by the Board of the Institute. The Theory Programme of the Institute has enjoyed prolonged and fruitful visits by Professors Ulf Lindström (Uppsala) and Finn Ravndal (Oslo).
During the year the Physics of Biological Systems project was selected by the Helsinki University of Technology as a "top research project".
The High Energy Physics Programme during the year 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 2003 both in target operation and off-line physics analysis. The analysis of the data accumulated by the completed DELPHI experiment at the former "LEP" collider at CERN continued.
The CMS Programme is divided into two projects: one for the development of the tracker and the trigger of the CMS detector at the LHC and the other for software development for the CMS data analysis.
The Nuclear Matter Programme of the Institute 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.
The Institute is the Finnish partner of the LHC Computing Grid Project at CERN (LCG-1) for the establishment of the distributed high-throughput computing capacity that will be required by 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 2003 the focus of the Technology Programme was on software development for distributed data-intensive Grid computation. The sabbatical visit by Professor Francois Grey of the Danish Microelectronics Center led to his being retained by CERN as the manager of the new OpenLab project. The sabbatical visit by Professor Erkko Autio of the Helsinki University of Technology led to his initiation and successful completion of the high-tech industry CERN supplier survey project. The survey report revealed that CERN has a notable role as a driver of the development of commercially successful high technology equipment.
The Institute has continued its strong efforts in graduate student training in frontline research. This activity is supported in part by the research projects themselves, and in part 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 2003 7 PhD and DSc degrees and 8 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 was brought to completion during the year. During the year the Institute hosted 11 visits by groups of students and 4 visits by teachers of Finnish high schools to CERN.
During the year 2003 a national strategy for the Finnish collaboration with CERN was laid out. This strategy spells out the goals of the research that HIP conducts at CERN, and defines the role of the project of the National Technology Agency TEKES for collaboration between Finnish industry and CERN. The project, which has been extraordinarily successful during the past 4 years, is carried out in close collaboration with HIP.
The Restricted European Committee on Future Accelerators RECFA visited HIP on September 26, and heard presentations by representatives of all the different Finnish research groups which are active in subatomic physics. On the basis of this review RECFA has made some valuable recommendations to the Finnish Ministry of Education. The Finnish research funding agency, the Academy of Finland, completed an overall survey of the conditions and level of scientific research in Finland. The recommendations in the report for strengthening the nationwide physics research effort are that ventures into new and timely research topics should be stimulated, that the funds for equipment should be increased and that the Finnish activities at CERN, especially in experimental particle physics, should be strengthened. All of these recommendations are both supportive of and in line with the research programme of the Helsinki Institute of Physics.
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 until he was elected Rector of the University. He was succeeded by Vice Rector Marja Makarow as chair of the Board of HIP. 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. The Institute is indebted to the outgoing members of the Scientific Advisory Board, Professors Hans Falk Hoffmann (CERN), Albrecht Wagner (DESY) and Gabriele Veneziano (CERN).
The Institute looks forward to a fruitful collaboration with the new members of the Scientific Advisory Board, Professors Jos Engelen (Nikhef, CERN), Heinrich Leutwyler (Bern) and Wolf-Dieter Schlatter (CERN).