First International Summer School on
Intelligent Front-End Signal Processing for Frontier Exploitation in Research and Industry
University of Oxford, UK, July 10th-16th, 2013
Supported by the ICFA Panel on Instrumentation, Innovation and Development
This is the first of a new series of annual summer schools covering the complete signal processing chain found in 21st century instrumentation.
The series of schools we are launching here will focus on the most advanced technologies in the fields of semiconductors, very deep sub-micron and 3D technologies, nanotechnology, advanced packaging & interconnects, telecommunications, real-time signal processing and filtering and massive parallel computing that are the essential items to build the next generation of full processing chain needed by Frontier research and Industry.
Each school will provide lectures and laboratory work in a variety of cross-disciplinary example applications drawn from the exploration of the distant universe, through medical imaging of the human body, to exploration of the world of elementary particles.
The target audience is M.Sc., Ph.D.and young postdoc-level engineers and physicists. Indeed the aim of this school is also to bring together the new generation of young engineers and researchers and opened each community to know each other through training sessions combining the most advanced high technological world with the frontier exploration research world especially in Astrophysics and Particle Physics. Research and Industrial fields have to get more and more used to work in close collaboration. This is essential to remain or to get at the forefront of the advanced and highly educated world.
The week-long school in Oxford will be dedicated to some of the most crucial challenges and issues of the front-end detection and processing for building the 21st century Frontier instruments. Why introducing “intelligence” at this early processing stage is an essential goal and how the advances in cutting-edge related technologies are instrumental will be explained. Worldwide experts from academia and industry will give lectures on technical developments and science overviews, alongside hands-on laboratory sessions with technology demonstrators and master-classes on related science.
It is not possible to cover in such a short period of time all the aspects tackled by this very wide-scope field. The choice is therefore made to cover several among the most promising and appealing technological aspects explaining the motivations of the fundamental research or applied worlds to adopt these directions and thus pursue active R&D.
The school agenda describes the proposed journey in the world of the Front-End Intelligent Devices for Frontier Research and Industry during 7 days. It will start day-1 by introducing the main components of the state of the art full processing chain and the technologies for designing and producing the Front End ASIC circuits. Day-2 will address the Silicon PMs case. Day-3 and 4 will cover the semi-conductor micro-strips and pixels based instruments cases. Both Silicon PMs and micro-strips and pixels technologies are the most used devices in research and many applied fields. Day-5 the tools for real-time filtering, triggering and data selection at Front End and in very challenging conditions will be presented. On Day-6, the data transmission challenges at Front End and the related advanced high tech solutions will be described. On Day-7, the tools for testing characterizing and ensuring the high performances quality of the produced demonstrators will be discussed.
The series of Labs, classes with exercises computer-based and the specific master-classes will serve as support and complementary training to the lectures. They will promote exchanges, collaborative and friendly efforts between the students and the lecturers and tutors.
International Organising Committee:
Ariella Cattai (CERN-CH), Mike Jones (Oxford U.-UK), Jacqueline N. Hewiit (MIT-USA), Giancarlo Prati (SSSup-IT), Tony Readhead (Caltech-USA), Aurore Savoy-Navarro (CNRS-FR/INFN-IT), Ian Shipsey (Purdue-USA), David Townsend (CIRC-SG), Sibylle Ziegler (TU-Munich, GE)
Local Organising Committee:
Garret Cotter, Vanessa Ferraro-Wood, Jamie Leech, Will Potter, Boon-Kok Tan