UF physicist selected to lead world's largest high energy project

February 16, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida physicist has been elected as the leader of the largest active high energy experiment in the world. Jacobo Konigsberg will head the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) collaboration for the next two years.

The CDF international experimental collaboration is committed to studying high energy particle collisions at the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, near Chicago. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.

Konigsberg’s formal title is spokesperson, which is a title “commonly used in particle physics experiments to denote the leader of the experiment,” said Konigsberg, who has worked on the CDF for 16 years.

The position is the highest in the experiment in terms of scientific and managerial leadership. Duties include monitoring the experiment’s scientific output, including the publications its researchers generate. Konigsberg also is charged with ensuring the experiment operates well from the technological point of view. His other roles include overseeing all other high-level management positions, setting priorities and ensuring the laboratory and funding agencies are aware of the experiment’s needs and provide the help needed to run it logistically and financially.

“The CDF collaboration is currently collecting data at the highest available energy in the world for particle collisions,” said Guenakh Mitselmakher, UF distinguished professor of physics and director of the UF Institute of High Energy Physics and Astrophysics. “It uses proton-antiproton colliding beams at the Tevatron accelerator in Batavia, near Chicago.”

The experiment studies the fundamental constituents of matter and forces in the universe by examining the results of collisions of protons and antiprotons at highest possible
energies. “This is a great recognition for Dr. Konigsberg and for the UF physics department,” Mitselmakher said.