Keynote Speakers

Jameson_Rollins

LIGO: The dawn of gravitational wave astronomy

Jameson Graef Rollins
LIGO Interferometer Controls Scientist

Scientists have been searching for the elusive gravitational wave for more than half a century. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) finally observed the gravitational wave signature from the merger of two black holes.

This detection marks the dawn of a new age of gravitational wave astronomy, where we routinely hear the sounds emanating from deep within the most energetic events in the Universe. This talk will cover the basics of gravitational waves and interferometric gravitational wave detectors, LIGO and it’s control systems, and details of the first direct detections of gravitational waves by LIGO.

 

javi7oficial

Open Hardware and Collaboration

Javier Serrano
Leader of the Hardware and Timing section, which is part of the Controls group in the Beams Department at CERN

Download the presentation slides

Open Source Hardware (OSHW) follows the lead of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and has similar goals: ensuring developers can share their work without artificial hurdles, improving quality through peer review, avoiding vendor lock-in and providing for a fair playground in which projects can thrive and accommodate contributions without compromising their long-term future. The talk will introduce OSHW and then attempt to answer a number of questions:

  • What are the perceived benefits and issues of OSHW, in general and in the context of public research facilities?
  • What is new with respect to FOSS?
  • What makes OSHW projects succeed or fail?

The talk will use real examples of OSHW projects throughout, and will conclude with some thoughts about what the future holds in this domain.

 

mark-heron

Future Trends on Control Systems for Large Research Facilities

Mark Heron
Head of Controls Group at Diamond Light Source

Accurate predictions of the future are inherently difficult, nevertheless in this talk I will consider some of the developments in control systems at large research facilities and from these try to predict where they are heading. In doing so, the talk will consider software, hardware, people and the management of work. While this will largely be based on developments within our community, it will also look outward to consider what potential external influences there may be.