While most of the ILC community was meeting at Tsukuba, Japan for TILC09, a new member had his first day at Fermilab. Andre Sulluchuco has just joined the team of the now five ILC communicators, taking over for Elizabeth Clements. He will closely collaborate with his partners from abroad: Rika Takahashi and Misato Hayashida in Asia, Barbara Warmbein and Perrine Royole-Degieux in Europe.

Andre Sulluchuco joins the ILC communication team.

Sulluchuco has a degree in social sciences and history and used to be a senior editor of publication for a non-profit organisation. At that time, he was not yet a communicator, but already had a keen interest in it and actively participated in media and public relations efforts in book publishing. Although his previous activities were based in his hometown, Chicago, Sulluchuco has an impressive international experience. Fluent in six languages – Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, and of course English, he travelled extensively around the world, especially to Europe and East Asia. He used to represent his former company at conferences and exhibitions, seek out the right authors and public relations people to work with, launch campaigns to represent the company well in those territories, travelling to Beijing, São Paulo and Berlin... to name just a few.

The new ILC communicator for the Americas had thought of changing careers for a while when he applied to this position. “As a University of Chicago alumni, I was well-aware of Fermilab's high reputation in the world of science and physics. I wanted to be part of an organisation which is well-respected for its contributions to society and for promoting leadership and research in the field,” said Sulluchuco. Particle physics is not exactly his field of expertise, but he believes that this lack of background knowledge gives him the best motivation to inform himself, and the outside world, about ongoing efforts in the field, recent trends and developments, and how the Americas are actively participating in both particle physics and ILC endeavours.

As one of the ILC communicators, Sulluchuco will write stories for ILC NewsLine and take care of the global and regional communications business – making sure that colleagues, decision makers and eventually the public will be well aware of the exciting studies and results in the ILC community. “What I find most exciting about this new job is the great opportunity to represent the American effort around the world, to collaborate with international specialists and to meet well-renowned leaders in this field,” said Sulluchuco. All communicators send a warm welcome to Andre... or shall they say Benvenuto? Bienvenue? Bienvenido? ようこそ ? Bem vindo? Willkommen?

-- Perrine Royole-Degieux