The 17th International Collaboration Meeting of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) was held via video conference from Jan. 25 to Feb. 5. About 220 scientists from dozens of institutions in Asia, Europe, and the Americas attended the meeting.
At the meeting's plenary session, Prof. WANG Yifang, JUNO spokesperson and director of IHEP, introduced JUNO's overall progress and its focus in the next phase. Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused enormous difficulties to travel and detector R&D, the schedule for the project has been well maintained with little impact. Prof. LI Xiaonan reported on civil construction progress. All blasting work for the underground experimental hall has been completed. Detector installation in the water pool will be started soon. Each subsystem reported its progress for the past half-year. Before the plenary session, 32 parallel sessions and technical reviews were held. Since detector installation is approaching, attendees paid particular attention to how onsite organization is being managed under epidemic conditions.
The JUNO Achievement Award for Young Researchers in 2020 was awarded to QIAN Xiaohui of IHEP, for his "key contributions to the central detector design and construction, in particular, of the very critical acrylic sphere and its supporting structure.” The JUNO Ph.D. Thesis Prize was awarded to Alexander Tietzsch of the University of Tübingen for his thesis entitled “Development, Installation and Operation of a Container-based Mass Testing System for 20-inch Photomultiplier Tubes for JUNO.”
The next collaboration meeting will be held in July, also by video conference.
