Colorado State University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford Sign Memorandum of Understanding to Collaborate

Colorado State University electrical engineering professors Stephen Milton and Sandra Biedron will assist the SLAC National Accelerator Facility at Stanford University with the conceptual design of compact light sources driven by high-energy electrons, according to a new agreement.

CSU and SLAC have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct the research over the next two years.

“Accelerators already help solve national challenges in such fields as medicine, energy and the environment and defense and security, but there is significant margin for improvement, especially in reference to better, more compact and more efficient accelerators,” said Milton, who has been a key member of the delivery team of the two brightest x-ray sources in North America, used for cutting-edge basic and applied research in a myriad of scientific and engineering fields.

Biedron and Milton have been at CSU for more than a year. Previously, they worked at Argonne National Laboratory and Sincrotrone Trieste, Italy, where they developed accelerators and peripherals for basic research as well as security and defense.

“The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has provided equipment to be used for training and thesis work as well as research funding for CSU staff and students to perform beam physics and accelerator engineering research,” Biedron said.

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is home to a two-mile linear accelerator—the longest in the world – and is a multipurpose laboratory at Stanford.

Before joining CSU, Biedron most recently served as the DOD Project Office director and as associate director of the Accelerator Institute at Argonne. In January, she was named a 2012 Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. Milton was a key member of the delivery team of the two brightest x-ray sources in North America. At Argonne most recently, he was Argonne Project Office director for the Argonne components for the Linac Coherent Light Source now operational at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. Most recently he served as the director of the FERMI@Elettra free-electron laser project in Italy.

They are part of ongoing laser, light source, high-energy physics, radiation physics and plasma/propulsion research activities at CSU.

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