Students at the last winter session of the USPAS in January 2006 at Arizona State University.

USPAS courses include hands-on lab work, including instrumentation courses where possible.

Every year for roughly the past twenty years, the U.S. Particle Accelerator School has organised two-week-long summer and winter sessions, comprised of courses for the scientific and engineering communities in the field of particle physics, nuclear physics, basic energy sciences, fusion and related accelerator technologies. Providing specialised accelerator physics and engineering courses that are not often available at universities, the USPAS has helped train thousands of students over the years, including more than 500 international participants and more than 1600 individuals from Department of Energy and National Science Foundation laboratories. The average attendance at USPAS sessions is about 130 students. This year, Texas A&M University will sponsor the winter session of the USPAS in Houston, Texas from 15-26 January 2007.

In an effort to give students the opportunity to learn more about the ILC, USPAS has started to integrate multiple courses about linear colliders into their curriculum, including the upcoming school in January. "A general theme that underlies the Winter 2007 school session constitutes the physics and technology for linear colliders," said USPAS Director Bill Barletta. "We try to make sure that we have courses relevant to the linear collider at every session so that someone who is interested in participating in the ILC can get the information they need."

Highlights from this year's winter session with a focus on linear collider physics include a one-week course on "Damping Ring Design and Physics Issues" taught by Andy Wolski of the University of Liverpool and Cockcroft Institute. Also of interest to students pursuing ILC work would be a one-week course on beam preservation, "Collective Effects and Wakefields," taught by Roger Jones of the University of Manchester and the Cockcroft Institute. This course might be paired with a course titled, "Beam Delivery System and Interaction Region of a Linear Collider," taught by Mauro Pivi and Andrei Seryi of SLAC and Nikolai Mokhov of Fermilab. GDE Director Barry Barish will also present a special evening lecture about the ILC.

"Our plan for every session is to include classes that will be critical for the linear collider," Barletta said. "We are betting our future in high energy physics on the ILC, and we need to make sure that there are students coming up."

-- Elizabeth Clements