First meeting of the ETpathfinder STAC

07/02/202024/03/2020

On the 6th and 7th of February 2020 the ETpathfinder Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) met in the ETpathfinder building at Maastricht to discuss and evaluate the ETpathfinder design and research plans.

The STAC meeting was very productive and STAC was keen to apply scrutiny to ETpathfinder’s design, budget, planning and research aims. But also made many very useful suggestions and recommendations regarding the overall project management and other organisational aspects.

To quote from the final STAC report to the ETpathfinder Raad: “Overall, the ETPF-STAC was very impressed with the vision for the facility, the technical capability of the leader and team, and the scope of the effort.

It will be transformative for the field to have a facility and a research programme covering the foreseen capabilities of the installation. It can become a very natural center for technical innovation and scientific breakthroughs in precision measurement, interferometry, cryogeny for gravitational wave detectors and for the formation of a next generation of gravitational wave scientists (to handle the next generation of gravitational wave detectors).

The growth of the team (and of the institutions interested in participating) is an exciting development and speaks to the timeliness and centrality of this infrastructure.”

STAC members

The STAC is chaired by David Shoemaker (MIT), who headed the Advanced LIGO project: the construction of the two 4 km long laser interferometers in the US, which were responsible for the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015.

The nine STAC members represent a wide cross-section of the worldwide gravitational wave community and in particular international leadership in relevant instrumentation. The other members are: