Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, December 8, 2008 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Barry Barish
"The Art and Science of doing Large International Science Projects"
ABSTRACT -- I have both scars and wisdom resulting from my involvements in a series of large science projects, both domestic and international. Large science projects in physics, astronomy, space, oceanography and beyond are becoming more common and more international. I will reflect on some of my personal experiences: MACRO (an international DoE funded project in Italy), LIGO (NSF funded MREFC project) and the International Linear Collider (a global proposal for the next great particle accelerator) in discussing the design, costing, organization, funding and especially good project management for large international science projects.
SPEAKER -- Dr. Barish earned a BA in 1957 and Ph.D. in 1963 in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Among his noteworthy research accomplishments were experiments using high-energy neutrinos at Fermilab that revealed the quark substructure of the nucleon. These experiments were among the first to observe the weak neutral current, a linchpin in the Electroweak Unification theory of Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg. Dr. Barish has served as the PI and Director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitationalwave Observatory (LIGO) for most of the last decade. Barish is presently the Director of the Global Design Effort for the International Linear Collider, the highly challenging worldwide effort to design and build the most ambitious particle accelerator every undertaken.
Barish is a Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, where he has taught and conducted research since 1963. In October 2002, he was nominated to the National Science Board; a 24-member board that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF) and advises the President and the Congress on policy issues related to science, engineering, and education. Dr. Barish has served on many advisory panels, and notably was co-chair of a sub panel of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) that developed the longrange plan for U.S. high-energy physics in 2001. In 2003, he was a member of the special panel for NASA that considered the future of the Hubble Space Telescope and the transition to the James Webb Space Telescope.