ATLAS

The project of making a detector involves more than just following a sheet of instructions. It is a collaboration of over 1850 individuals who have to work together as a team while being thousands of miles apart. We posed questions to a few of these men and women to see what happens behind the scenes to make an undertaking like this work.

Questions:

What is the balance between individual creativity and the process of being part of a large collaboration? answer
How do important decisions get made? How do individuals not in the leadership get their voices heard? answer
How is the leadership structured? answer
How is the leadership selected? answer
How is such a large and far-flung collaboration managed? answer
How do 1850 people communicate among themselves? In such communication, how do you bridge the large distances and time differences? answer
How does one apportion the tasks? answer
How does one apportion the costs? answer
Where does the money come from? answer
How do people join? answer
How do you assure that all the detector pieces fit together? answer
How was the site chosen? (Why Geneva?) answer
Why have an international collaboration? answer
How will data be analyzed among 1850 people? answer
How will papers be agreed upon? answer
How does any one collaborator get credit for his/her contributions? answer
What is the impact of the global spread of the collaboration? How does one contribute from 6000 miles away (from US, Japan, Russia)? answer