n 12.06.23 – On the 7th of June 2023, Rodolphe Gonzalez, precision mechanic at the IPHYS mechanical workshop, and Norbert Adjadj, mechanic at the High Energy Physics Laboratory (LPHE), obtained high-level recognition from the LHCb Collaboration at CERN, consisting of more than 1100 scientists from 21 countries, and received the LHCb Technical Award 2023 for their “outstanding contribution to the construction and installation of SciFi detectors”.
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The LHCb experiment at CERN aims at measuring fundamental properties of matter and interactions with high precision, in particular through the weak decays of heavy flavour hadrons. LPHE scientists have been members of the LHCb collaboration at CERN since its foundation. They have participated in the construction and operation of the detector, and in the analysis of the data. With the data collected between 2011 and 2018, over 600 scientific papers have been published.

Since 2019, the LHCb detector has undergone a major upgrade. One of the new detectors, used for tracking charged particles, is based on the technology of scintillating fibres read out with Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). The LPHE scientists played a major role in developing this technology and in the construction of the “SciFi Tracker” detector. During the construction, Norbert Adjadj and Rodolphe Gonzalez were involved in the manufacturing of 500 scintillating fibre arrays. With the precious help from the IPHYS workshops, their dedication to precision and efficiency allowed to reach the production quality under the tight time constraints imposed by the project timeline.

The installation of the SciFi Tracker in the LHCb cavern at CERN started in 2019. Rodolphe Gonzalez and Norbert Adjadj were first involved in the preparation of the mechanical infrastructure in which the detector elements would be installed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, while travel was restricted in most of Europe, they provided the main technical support ensuring the continuation of the detector installation. In March 2022, the final adjustments to the alignment of the detector was done with the help of the EPFL technicians, and the detector was ready for taking data for the restart of the LHC accelerator in Spring 2022.

The quality of the work of Rodolphe Gonzalez and Norbert Adjadj and their enthusiasm at all stages of the construction and installation of the detector was recognised by the LHCb collaboration, leading to this well-deserved LHCb Technical Award 2023.

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