Prof Vinod Chohan (1949-2017)
The QUASAR Group mourns the loss of Prof Vinod “Nick” Chohan. Nick has been a member of our Group and held an honorary Professorship with the University of Liverpool since 2014 when he retired from CERN.
Nick obtained first class honours in Electrical Engineering from University College Cardiff (University of Wales) and PhD from the University of Essex, Colchester. He has been Senior Staff Member at CERN over 30 years with career directions that have been largely mission-oriented, deadline-driven, in various technical and management roles for the CERN’s Accelerators.
Before joining the QUASAR Group Nick has held positions in various accelerator related fields including beam diagnostics, instrumentation, accelerator studies, improvements & performance, controls and safety, including radiation safety.
For the more recent Higgs Boson discovery at CERN in 2012 & the 2013 Physics Nobel Prize, he contributed significantly to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Project, particularly for the testing, measuring & training of all the superconducting magnets for the 27 km circumference Collider. He led the team which, over 7 years, fully tested, qualified, & trained up to 13 kA these cryo-magnets for the designed nominal operation @ 11850 A. In this context, he has featured in London Science Museum’s Big Bang exhibition in 2007, BBC Horizon Series film with Prof Brian Cox in 2008, as well as in interviews with Nik Gowing of the BBC World Service TV Hub programme (2008 & 2012). There have also been a number of TV News, Documentaries & Newspaper articles in India regarding his work as well with a Google Hang-out in California in 2012.
Nick was also part of the team that led to discovery of the W & Z Bosons in 1983 at CERN & the Nobel Prize in Physics; He was the Accelerator Operation Coordinator for the CERN’s Antiproton Accumulator and was closely associated with Simon Van der Meer, who shared that prize.
Most recently, Nick was the main editor of the Technical Design Report of CERN’s latest antimatter accelerator, the Extra Low Energy Storage Ring (ELENA).
Nick has been a fantastic colleague, mentor and close friend for many years and the Group is deeply saddened about this loss.