IEEE Prize for Lucio Rossi

Lucio Rossi receives his prize from John Spargo, Chairman of the IEEE Council on Superconductivity (left), and Martin Nisenoff, Chairman of the Council on Superconductivity’s Awards Committee (right). (Photo: IEEE Council on Superconductivity)

With the magnets installed in the tunnel and work on the interconnections almost completed, Lucio Rossi has reaped the rewards of fifteen years of work. And yet, when the physicist from Milan arrived to take charge of the group responsible for the superconducting magnets in 2001, success seemed far from assured. Endowed with surprising levels of energy, Lucio Rossi, together with his team, ensured that production of these highly complex magnets got underway. Today, that achievement earns them the recognition not only of CERN but also of the international superconducting community.

It is for this achievement that Lucio Rossi was awarded the prize by the IEEE’s (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Council on Superconductivity at the Magnet Technology conference held in Philadelphia at the end of August. The award is made to engineers, scientists and managers who have made outstanding contributions in the field of applied superconductivity. It is the third year running that the prize has been awarded to members of the CERN personnel, demonstrating the key role played by the LHC in the field of superconductivity. The prize was awarded to Daniel Leroy in 2006 and Romeo Perin in 2005.

According to the citation, Lucio Rossi was awarded the prize for his leadership of the group responsible for procuring the superconducting dipole and quadrupole magnets for the LHC, for his contributions to the design of various superconducting magnet systems, including the ATLAS toroid magnet, and for his teaching work at the University of Milan and the INFN, where he trained future leaders of the superconducting magnet community.

Having graduated from the University of Milan, Lucio Rossi began his career in 1981 at the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), where he participated in the design of Italy’s first large superconducting magnets, notably for the heavy ion cyclotron installed at Catania in Sicily. He also contributed to developing the ZEUS magnet for the HERA ring in Hamburg. In 1990, he took on the responsibility for manufacturing the prototypes for the main dipole magnets for the LHC. He participated in the development of the first 13000 amp, long Rutherford-type cables. It is this technology, based on a superconducting niobium-titanium alloy, that underpins the LHC magnets. At the end of the 1990s, Lucio Rossi worked on a niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) cable, a superconducting material to produce magnetic fields above 10 Tesla and that could be used for an LHC upgrade after 2015. At the same time, he took charge of the work to develop and manufacture the cable for the ATLAS toroid magnets. In 2001, CERN invited him to head the Accelerator Technology Department’s Main Magnets and Superconductors (MMS) group, later known as the Magnets, Cryostats and Superconductors (MCS) group, a position he still holds today.