Award-winning physicist welcomed at OIST

By Juliette Mutheu

Last summer, OIST launched an active recruitment of scientists who have demonstrated outstanding scholastic accomplishment and leadership. One such scientist is Award-wining physicist Dr. Tsumoru Shintake, who started work at OIST in September. Dr. Shintake previously worked at the SACLA facility at RIKEN, where he was the main accelerator construction leader overseeing 200 staff who built the C-Band main accelerator. The SACLA facility took 5 years to successfully complete and cost $400 million. His scientific research on the study of the phenomena of the Shintake-Structure has taken overall 20 years. It is this accelerator that won Dr. Shintake the Free Electron Laser (FEL) Prize at the 33^rd International Free Electron Laser Conference  in August 2011, in Shanghai, China. The prize was for his outstanding contribution to FEL Science and Technology.  His vision at OIST is to build a similar but smaller device with a completely different concept that uses the quantum wave effect hence his OIST unit name; the Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit. Once completed, the machine will enable scientists to see much smaller structures than they can now.  Welcome!

Dr. Tsumoru Shintake stands next to his award winning, C-band Main Accelerator at the SACLA facility. He now leads the Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit at OIST.