Fostering collaboration within OMA

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Sudharsan Srinivasan, OMA Fellow based at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, has completed a secondment at University of Seville/Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA), as part of his OMA training. CNA is recognized as a national singular infrastructure for particle accelerator based interdisciplinary research and carries out fundamental and applied research. Amongst others it features a 3 MV tandem van de Graaff accelerator, a 18 MeV proton cyclotron, a 1 MV tandem Cockcroft-Walton for accelerator mass spectrometry, a compact accelerator for Carbon-14 dating, and a PET/CT scanner for humans and large animals. This gave Sudharsan excellent opportunities to understand the experimental capabilities and an insight into current R&D.

According to Sudharsan, the secondment led to many fruitful conversations, networking possibilities with CNA experts, and memorable lunch breaks. Thanks to Anna Baratto Roldán, the OMA Fellow based at CNA, Sudharsan had the opportunity to tour the entire facility and get detailed insight into current experiments.

He also presented the work he carries out at PSI in a seminar talk. His presentation on the design and commissioning of a cavity beam position monitor led to interesting discussions about the possibility to use cavity resonators for beamline monitoring at CNA and the limitations they currently face. The problems discussed included the customization of the cavity design, the opportunity to it use for low energy beams, and the measurement of the bandwidth.

This secondment exemplifies the unique opportunities OMA offers to its Fellows to open new international collaborations within the network.