Vinod Chohan

Vinod Chohan
Born	(1949-05-01)May 1, 1949 Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika
Fields	Engineering
Institutions	CERN

Vinod Chohan (born 1 May 1949) is a Tanzanian-born accelerator specialist and engineer, and a Senior Staff Member at CERN for over 30 years.

He was part of the team that led to discovery of the W and Z bosons in 1983 at CERN & the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was also the Accelerator Operation Coordinator for the CERN’s Anti-proton Accumulator and was closely associated with Simon Van der Meer, who shared that prize.^[1]

For the Higgs Boson discovery in 2012 & the 2013 Physics Nobel Prize, he contributed significantly to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Project, particularly for the testing, measuring & training of all the superconducting magnets for the 27 km circumference Collider.^{[2] [3] [4][5]} He has held technical and management roles concerning the CERN accelerators with career directions that have been largely mission-oriented and deadline-driven, such as in beam diagnostics,^[6] instrumentation, accelerator studies, improvements & performance, controls^{[7][8][9][10]} , superconducting magnet tests and safety^[11][12][13] , including radiation safety.

Early life and education

Vinod Chohan was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika on May 1, 1949 into a Saurashtran Hindu family. He commenced his secondary education at Govt Indian Secondary School, later called Azania Secondary School in Upanga, Tanzania, and in 1967, moved to Colston's School in Bristol. Chohan studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College, Cardiff and obtained his PhD^[14] at University of Essex.

Career

Vinod Chohan joined CERN in January 1975 as a Fellow in the Proton Synchrotron division at CERN. In 1977, he was offered a staff position at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research, in the Beam Dynamics Group of the Cyclotron Accelerator Division.

In 1980, he returned to CERN as a staff member at Proton Synchrotron (PS) division. He held various positions including as Section Leader for the Antiproton Accumulator Complex Performance & Studies as well as Controls & Diagnostics for the Anti-proton Rings Group. Later, he also took responsibilities as the Coordinator of Systems Integration in the PS Beam Diagnostics Group; he also served as a Section Leader for Systems Integration and beam current transformers.

During his tenure at CERN, he was also associated with Fermilab for the commissioning of the FNAL Antiproton Sources in 1985 and 1986 and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where he collaborated on Proton Storage Ring in 1989.

In 1993, Vinod assisted the CERN Accelerator School on Accelerator Systems, held in the Centre for Advance Technology, Indore, India^[15] by teaching a course on Beam Diagnostics Systems and Controls.^[16]

In 2002, he joined the LHC Project team responsible for developing CERN's new project, the Large Hadron Collider. Chohan led and managed the team responsible for testing hundreds of superconducting magnets to be used in the collider. This involved, amongst many other issues, process challenges^[17][18] as well as those of integrating Indian scientists and engineers^[19] on one-year contracts from DAE into a European team. Over 7 years he led a team which fully tested, qualified, & trained up to 13 kA these cryo-magnets for the designed nominal operation @ 11850 A.

During the LHC construction, he has featured in London Science Museum's Big Bang exhibition in 2007,^[20][21] BBC Horizon Series film with Prof. Brian Cox in 2008.^[22] For the LHC first beam start-up, he had a live TV interview with Nik Gowing of the BBC World Service Hub programme in 2008^[23] and similarly for the Higgs discovery announcement in July 2012.^[24] There have also been a number of TV News, Documentaries & Newspaper articles in India^{[25][26][27][28][29]} regarding his work as well with a Google Hang-out in California in 2012.^[30]

After the LHC start-up in 2008, he was leader of the team responsible for Technical Coordination for all of CERN's Accelerators and Beam Experimental Areas, except for the LHC.

Memberships

Elected as Member of the IEE in 1981 and as fellow at the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET, formerly IEE) in November 2013.

Member of the Joint CERN-DAE (Department of Atomic Energy, India) committee for CERN-India collaboration since 2007.

Publications

• Chohan, Vinod C (2011). "Simon van der Meer (1925-2011): A modest genius of accelerator science". Rev. Accel. Sci. Technol. 4 (1): 279–291. doi:10.1142/s1793626811000550. 
• Chohan, Vinod (2012). Simon van der Meer and his legacy to CERN and particle accelerators. Geneva: CERN. p. 28. 
• Chohan, Vinod; Van der Meer, Simon (December 1989). "Aspects of automation and applications in the CERN antiproton source". CERN: 1–11. 

External links

• "Quasar Group". University of Liverpool. University of Liverpool. Retrieved 14 August 2015. 

References