New Lab Chief: 'I'm thrilled'

By Wendy Pitlick, Black Hills Pioneer
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LEAD - The man who will be charged with developing the Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory is no stranger to underground labs, or the experiments that are conducted inside.

Dr. Jose Alonso officially started as the new Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory Director last Monday, and he has been busy ever since. As the new lab director, Alonso will serve as the chief executive and will be responsible for the startup and overall operation of the state-run, interim laboratory at the 4,850-foot level, known as the SUSEL.

"The ability to get the first part of the lab up and running is very important in this process," Alonso told a group of reporters Tuesday, right after he finished a conference call with just one of the many scientific collaborations proposing experiments in Homestake. "I am thrilled and delighted to be here," he said.

Though he retired from his work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, Calif. in 2002, his long and distinguished list of experiences in developing labs and physics projects from scratch attracted him to the position at Homestake. As the new lab director, Alonso said he will now be spending a great deal of time in Lead working with scientists from around the world who have submitted 85 letters of interest for experiments in the SUSEL. His job is to determine who will go in first and to make sure everything is developed to accommodate those experiments. Though Alonso said he will not be re-locating to Lead, preferring to maintain his residence in California, he said most of his work will be done with traveling to various meetings, conducting conference calls with scientists and overseeing the infrastructure development for the lab.

"We are on an extremely aggressive schedule," Alonso said as he explained that he has already jumped into the project headfirst. He continued to explain that the success of the federally funded lab proposal for a deep underground science and engineering lab at the 7,400-foot level of Homestake depends heavily on the successful implementation of the SUSEL at the 4,850-foot level - a key component of Homestake's proposal for the lab.

With a long resume that is filled with physics projects and instruction at some of the top universities and labs in the world - such as the Minnesota Institute of Technology, Yale University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Alonso said he is more than ready for the daunting task of developing SUSEL. In fact, he said the infrastructure of the Homestake Mine, with its many hoists and cables leading down the shafts, is very similar to what he worked with when developing and managing the Bevelac project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. The Bevelac is a large accelerator facility for which Alonso worked on pioneering efforts in high energy, heavy-ion acceleration and experimentation for nuclear science and biomedical applications. During his work on the Bevelac, which stretched over the course of about seven years, Alonso was a leader in operating the facility, and he initiated trials for hadron-therapy for cancer patients. He also developed instrumentation and techniques for medical imaging and bioresearch programs, as well as did the first applications of radioactive beams for medical diagnostic imaging.

In addition to his work with Bevelac, Alonso has also served as the co-principal investigator for a grant-funding proposal from the National Cancer Institute, for hospital-based proton therapy systems. During this time he worked on the specifications, design and procurement strategies for the proton therapy facilities. Additionally, Alonso has collaborated with five national laboratories across the country on the $1.3 billion Spallation Neutron Source project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Spallation Neutron Source has been dubbed as the most powerful neutron source in the world. In his role on that senior management team, Alonso was responsible for overseeing the technical design, cost and the schedule for the accelerator systems for the project. It's a job that is almost exactly the same as what he will be responsible for at the SUSEL, as he nearly starts from scratch with developing the internationally acclaimed lab at Homestake.

Following his retirement from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Alonso said he continued to be extremely active in the scientific community, working on the development of the Large Hadron Collider which, when completed next year, will be the world's largest particle accelerator located in Geneva, Switzerland.

"Being retired in the scientific community is different," he said. "You might have your retirement party on Friday, and then someone says to you 'I'll see you in the office on Monday.'"

That certainly has been true for this physicist, who seems to have lived and breathed particle accelerators for the last 40 years of his career. In fact, he said when he finished his post-retirement work on the particle accelerator in Switzerland; his wife presented him with a "honey-do" list. He had just started on that list when the opportunity to develop the SUSEL came up.

"The honey do list will get put off again," he said.

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