On Saturday, April 19, 2003, Dr. John Marburger, Science Adviser to the President of the United States and Director of the United States Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), attended the K2K-II Commencement Ceremony held at High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan. The purpose of the ceremony was to commemorate the restart of the K2K experiment after the unfortunate accident it experienced in the Super-Kamiokande detector in November 2001. The detector, which is used as the far detector of the K2K experiment, was successfully reconstructed during last year. The K2K experiment, which started taking data in April 1999 and successfully took data until July 2001, has produced results that indicate neutrino oscillations as observed previously in the atmospheric neutrinos. This finding is the first successful demonstration of a long baseline neutrino oscillation experimentation technique and the first confirmation of the Super-Kamiokande discovery of neutrino oscillation in the atmospheric neutrinos using accelerator produced neutrino beams. With the improved near detector and the rebuilt Super-Kamiokande detector, K2K-II promises to deliver more exciting results in the near future. As Science Adviser to the President, Dr. Marburger plays a decisive role in the development of the scientific strategy of the United States. The offcial U.S. delegates to the ceremony included Dr. Norman Neureiter, Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State; Mr. William Gaines, Coordinator for International Affairs at OSTP; Prof. Chang Kee Jung, Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; and Mr. Kevin Maher, Minister-counselor for Environment, Science and Technnology, American Ambassy in Tokyo and his staff. The visiting schedule included an briefing on the KEK program, and study tours of the K2K neutrino beam line, the K2K near detector, Accelerator Test Facility, and KEKB/BELLE experiment, which was followed by the K2K-II commencement ceremony. On April 20, as part of his visit, he also visited the University of Tokyo Kamioka Observatory in Kamioka, Japan, which hosts the Super-Kamiokande and the Kamland experiments along with other underground experiments. During the visit, international cooperation, especially between the U.S. and Jaapn, in the current and future particle physics research has been discussed, and further strengthening of the cooperation was encouraged. Dr. Marburger is a physicist, working for many years in science administration, e.g. as the president of the State University of New York in Stony Brook and as the director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. This was his second visit to KEK: his first visit to KEK was in 1994.
www@superk.physics.sunysb.edu $Id: news03_marburger.html,v 1.1 2003/04/24 00:30:19 superk Exp $