The Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development (NICADD) was founded as a temporary center in 2001 and became a permanent center in 2008 to foster and support the development of a new generation of accelerator and detector technologies in northern Illinois and to provide high technology educational and research opportunities for students and residents of Illinois.
The three center objectives, namely, (1) the advancement of accelerator research and development, (2) the advancement of detector research and development, and (3) the provision of educational opportunities in science and technology, serve to broaden the research tradition established by the local national laboratories and to help ensure that Northern Illinois University remains an internationally recognized center of research and education.
NICADD personnel collaborate closely with Fermilab, the leading U.S. site for the international linear collider, and Argonne, a proponent of the advanced exotic beam laboratory. The NICADD experimental particle physics group has been involved in the operation of particle detectors at Fermilab and in Europe and in the development of new detectors and detector technologies for future experiments including those at the linear collider.
The experimental particle physics group established a detector development laboratory at NIU and also owns and operates with Fermilab a plastic scintillator extruder at Fermilab that is used to make particle detector components.
The beam physics and astrophysics group is developing particle beam simulations and diagnostics for these next generation particle accelerators; these simulation techniques are also well suited for galactic simulations. This is the strongest university-based accelerator physics group in Illinois. The group has built and maintains a 100 node computational cluster at NIU.
The beam physics and astrophysics group is currently constructing a low energy beam facility at NIU and, in collaboration with Argonne, the group is building at Argonne a high energy beam diagnostics laboratory. Both laboratories will be used for the evaluation of simulations and diagnostics.
These efforts over the past five years represent significant contributions to the future of accelerator and particle physics in the northern Illinois region, satisfying two of the primary objectives of the center.