Briefs: Philippe Lebrun is “Engineer of the Year”

Philippe Lebrun, a member of the Management Committee of the IIR and Head of Section A of the IIR (Cryology and Gas Processing), was awarded the "Prix Ingénieur de l'Année 2010" in the "Science" category, by the French magazine Usine Nouvelle. This award recognizes his outstanding work on the Switzerland-based CERN's Large Hadron Collider, its large niobium-titanium (NbTi) superconducting magnets, capable of producing magnetic fields up to 8.3 teslas, and its cryocooling systems, that can lower the temperature down to -271°C (2 K) (see "Technology" section). In his speech during the awarding ceremony, Philippe Lebrun emphasized the importance of applied science projects, for education and science in general and for the technological developments they can drive: as an example, the superconductive technology developed in CERN has already found applications in medical imaging.