The 16th International Conference on Ion Sources, ICIS 2015, was held in New York City from August 23 to August 28, 2015. The conference was organized by the Collider-Accelerator Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is located on Long Island, about 60 miles east of the Manhattan venue.
This bi-yearly conference provides an international forum to exchange information and present recent advances on all types of ion sources used throughout the world. The scientific program covered themes of ion source science and technology that are relevant to the production of beams for scientific research and for applications. The program consisted of invited talks and contributed presentations, either in the form of oral presentations or posters. This year, there were 236 participants, including 35 students, coming from 24 countries. There were 19 invited oral presentations and 30 contributed oral presentations, as well as 206 posters presented in 3 dedicated sessions. There were no parallel sessions, so all poster and oral presentations could be attended by all participants. From the many stimulating talks and posters, it is clear that there is a lot of activity in the field of ion source development and application and that very good progress has been made. Figure 1, taken from the excellent summary talk given at the closing of the conference by past Chair Atsushi Kitagawa, from the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan, shows the many types of ion sources, applications, and supporting topics which were covered at this conference.
Slide from the summary presentation by Atsushi Kitagawa showing the range of topics covered at the conference.
Slide from the summary presentation by Atsushi Kitagawa showing the range of topics covered at the conference.
There were 10 vendors who exhibited products and services at the conference. These vendor exhibits are very useful in which source developers can become aware of new products and technologies and discuss future needs with representatives of the companies.
As will be discussed in more detail by Jose Alonso in the following section, we were very pleased to once again be able to present the Brightness Award at this conference. This award was originally suggested by Julien Bergoz and sponsored for six ICIS cycles by Bergoz Instrumentation. It was graciously sponsored this year by Kejin Taiji New Technology Co. of Lanzhou, China. The award went to Richard Vondrasek of Argonne National Laboratory for his impressive improvements made in the field of ECR charge breeders. We are very grateful to Jose Alonso for once again agreeing to serve as Brightness Award Administrator.
The conference venue, the Marriott Marquis Hotel, provided us with excellent facilities and services by their expert staff, as well as a very nice location in the heart of Times Square. The venue proved to be very conducive to frequent interaction and informal discussions among participants.
On Tuesday evening, Prof. Francesco Volpe of Columbia University hosted an informal tour and reception at the Columbia Plasma Physic Lab. Following the conference closing on Friday afternoon, there was a tour of Brookhaven National Lab, organized by Tara Shiels of BNL. Approximately, 100 of the participants took part in the tour, where they saw the variety of ion sources developed and used in the Collider-Accelerator Department, as well as several of the large facilities (STAR and PHENIX detectors at RHIC and the NSLS II facility). We are grateful for the support provided by Brookhaven Science Associates for some of these conference activities.
Many people contributed greatly to the success of this conference, and I would like to express my sincere appreciation for all this help. The International Advisory Committee, 20 world experts on ion sources, has many tasks in addition to providing continuity to the conference series. Their responsibilities included suggesting and selecting invited speakers, judging for the Brightness Award, selecting the location of future conferences, as well as participating in the conference as active ion source researchers. Recent past chairs Martin Stockli, Santo Gammino, and Atsushi Kitagawa provided me with much information and helpful advice regarding the organization of this conference. The Scientific Program Committee, chaired by Edward Beebe, selected oral presentations and reviewed abstracts. The high quality of the scientific program is due to the hard work of these two committees.
The Local Organizing Committee was skillfully chaired by Sue Pankowski. This was an experienced crew who made my job much easier. While hard working, they also were the friendly faces providing assistance to all during the conference. I suspect all attendees got help at some time from Sandy, Anna, Caitlin, Alyssa, Nancy, Takeshi, Nick, Frank, or Bryan.
Alexander Pikin took on the task of Proceedings Coordinator, and among other tasks, he assembled, categorized, and edited abstracts. We are very grateful to the Review of Scientific Instruments for once again publishing the proceedings of this conference in this special issue. I would like to thank Dr. Richard Pardo and Dr. Ian Brown for again serving as Associate Editors. The quality of these proceedings is due both to their dedication and the fact that they are very experienced experts on ion sources.
During the week of the conference, the International Advisory Committee met and reviewed several excellent proposals for the hosting of ICIS 2017. CERN was selected, with Jacques Lettry acting as the next Conference Chair. I am sure that the conference is in very capable hands and will be a great success.
