A smooth welding pattern inside of the DESY 9-cell cavity by Kyoto Camera

From left: Yoshihisa Iwashita, Hitoshi Hayano, Yujiro Tajima at the Nishikawa Award Ceremony

On 23 March, the 2008 Nishikawa Award Ceremony was held in Tokyo, and awards were given to three ILC scientists: Yoshihisa Iwashita (Kyoto University), Hitoshi Hayano (KEK) and Yujiro Tajima (Toshiba Co., Ltd).

Nishikawa Award commemorates a deed of Tetsuji Nishikawa, former KEK Director General, and honours the achievements of highly creative, internationally recognised, R&D on accelerator experiments, which has been published on paper. Iwashita, Hayano and Tajima were awarded for their excellence in the development of a high-resolution surface inspection system for superconducting cavities or "Kyoto Camera", and successful inspections with it.

“We just did what we need to do, and this system is a fruit of a necessary effort. Still, I am extremely happy that we can contribute significantly in ongoing R&D,” said Iwashita. There have been some quotation requests from overseas already. “We are working on them,” he said.

Akira Yamamoto, one of the Project Managers of the Global Design Effort (GDE) congratulated them, saying “this is the representative example of the R&D developed with novel creativity, which is practical, offers new insight to the community, and has established the reputation both in Japan and abroad. I would like to offer my heartiest congratulations!”

They will continue with R&D on Kyoto Camera to enhance its resolution, and to make its functionality more sophisticated, such as automatisation. “We would like to pursue the development on other nondestructive inspection techniques,” Iwashita said.

-- Rika Takahashi