A new leadership team for the ATLAS Group at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) was announced on August 15, with Prof. Joao Guimaraes Da Costa appointed as the new group leader. Prof. Zhuang Xu’ai and Prof. Zhu Hongbo were appointed as deputy group leaders, and Prof. Fang Yaquan as academic committee chair. Fang Yaquan, Ouyang Qun, Huang Yanping, Liang Zhijun and Shi Xin are the academic committee members.

At the group meeting, Prof. Lou Xinchou, director of the Experimental Physics Division (EPD), announced the new appointments. The IHEP ATLAS group management team is formed by the ATLAS group leader, deputy leaders and academic committee chair. The appointment period is three years.

There are high expectations of the new ATLAS leaders. They are encouraged to secure funds to ensure that the ATLAS group can make outstanding achievements in physics research, detector operation, upgrades and other aspects of the experiment. The new team plans to aim at long-term goals, continuously building and strengthening the team. Another task is to increase the influence of IHEP ATLAS group members, especially to improve the competitiveness and recognition of younger group members in the international ATLAS Collaboration. Young group members are encouraged to take roles as physics group conveners, operation leaders, coordinators, contact persons and other key roles, thus raising the status and reputation of the IHEP group within the ATLAS Collaboration.

The current goal of the IHEP ATLAS group is to become competitive with big groups at national laboratories in the US and Europe in the very near future.

The ATLAS detector is installed at the LHC, at CERN in Switzerland. The ATLAS Collaboration is composed of more than three thousand scientists from all over the world. Its main scientific goal is to carry out research and exploration at the high energy frontier of particle physics.