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People: Andrei Seryi

(Photo - Andre Seryi)
Andrei Seryi.
(Photo by Diana Rogers.)

Since beginning his career in 1986, SLAC senior scientist and project manager for FACET Andrei Seryi has worked at five labs in three countries, with the last 10 years at SLAC. In this decade, Seryi has led international collaborations to design and build linear accelerator experimental facilities, all while continuing his accelerator research and design projects at SLAC.

Today, Seryi devotes most of his efforts at SLAC to the FACET project—Facilities for Accelerator Science and Experimental Test Beams at SLAC—an experimental facility created for studies of advanced methods of plasma wakefield acceleration of electron and positron beams.

"Plasma acceleration is a very promising technique that may change the design of future machines and I am very happy to lead the dedicated FACET team," Seryi said.

Seryi is also the deputy spokesperson of the Accelerator Test Facility International Collaboration, responsible for the ATF2 test facility, a prototype of the beam delivery system for a linear collider. ATF2 was recently installed at the high energy physics research organization KEK, in Japan.

"The work on beam delivery started for me as early as 1988, when I was working on my PhD," Seryi said. His doctoral thesis explored beam delivery system designs for linear accelerators. He returned to the field to lead the group of nearly one hundred scientists from around the world in making a technical design for the beam delivery system for the International Linear Collider and ATF2.

"Andrei is one of the best accelerator physicists at the lab," said Tor Raubenheimer, the assistant director for SLAC's Accelerator Research Division. "I recruited him in 1999 to join us on the Next Linear Collider effort and he has done an outstanding job."

Next year, Seryi will use his experience in technical design and international collaboration to embark on a new challenge—becoming the next director of the John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science. The JAI was created in 2004 as a joint venture between the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway University of London, in the United Kingdom. Seryi will take up his post in August 2010 and will also hold a fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford.

"In assuming the Directorship of the JAI, Andrei will bring his broad knowledge of accelerator science and tremendous energy to one of the world's leading institutions in accelerator science," said SLAC Director of Particle Physics and Astrophysics David MacFarlane. "We look forward to exploring ways to further enhance the existing ties between SLAC and JAI in the coming years."

Seryi agrees. "Accelerator science is the major thrust behind fundamental discoveries and it is making an increasingly important contribution to everyday life through the applications of accelerators in industry, biology and medicine," he said. "I am looking forward to strengthening a collaboration between JAI and SLAC. The collaboration will include experiments at ATF2, FACET and many other future projects. Many things will be connecting me to SLAC."  

"We look forward to continued collaboration with Andrei and his new team at JAI in the future," Raubenheimer said. 

—Lauren Knoche
  
SLAC Today, October 7, 2009