History
At the first U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) review of the detector research and development (R&D) program at the five high-energy physics (HEP) national laboratories, it was recognized that almost all science, but particularly the field of HEP, would benefit from the development of both evolutionary and transformative detector instrumentation that is coordinated across the national laboratories and with the university community, and with international partners and other disciplines.
Instrumentation R&D is inherently necessary to our scientific future. Therefore, a workshop on detector R&D in HEP was held at Fermilab from October 7–9, 2010, to survey the detector research and development being carried out at national laboratories and universities, to identify the areas of detector R&D that hold greatest promise, and to identify current challenges and future needs of all stakeholders and discuss the future of detector R&D in the United States. One of the conclusions of the workshop was that there seemed to be an acute awareness that for a sustained viability of the field a renewed investment in instrumentation development with the appropriate organization is needed. In response to this, the DPF executive committee appointed a task force to address the organization of HEP instrumentation. The task force concluded its work in November 2011 and presented their findings and recommendations to HEPAP. One of the recommendations was the formation of CPAD, a standing body for the development of instrumentation for the field of particle physics created under the auspices of the executive committee of the DPF. In the spring of 2012, CPAD was formed.