Physics professor elected to Gammasphere Users Executive Committee

Physics professor Con Beausang was recently elected to the Gammasphere Users Executive Committee. Gammasphere, the world’s most powerful  gamma ray microscope for scientific research, is currently housed at Argonne National Laboratory.

The Gammasphere Users Group facilitates the exchange of information and advice among the nuclear physics community with regard to the use of Gammasphere. The group encourages and supports further developments that explore the capabilities of Gammasphere by continued research on gamma-ray detectors, and it also promotes the development of auxiliary equipment that enhances the physics research that can be done with Gammasphere.

Members of the Executive Committee are charged with representing the interests of researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, which funds the project.

Beausang has been a member of the users group since 1990 and served on the Executive Committee once before in 2005. Gammasphere, consisting of up to 110 large volume Germanium detectors, has been operational for more than 10 years at Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.

Beausang is also involved in the development of the United States’ Gamma Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA), a $50 million project that will ultimately result in a gamma-ray spectrometer, which will be 100 to 1000 times more powerful than Gammasphere.  

Posted March 21, 2008