September 2, 2019
For his significant contribution to the accelerator physics, international cooperation, student training and exchange, and in connection with the 60th birthday, Director of CANDLE Synchrotron Research Institute prof. Vasili Tsakanov was awarded the “Gold Medal” of Science Committee of Armenia.
V. M. Tsakanov began his scientific career at Yerevan Physics Institute in 1981 after graduating from Rostov State University. In 1990 he defended his PhD thesis on new methods of charged particles acceleration under the supervision of prof. Eduard Laziev.
In the 90’s V. Tsakanov was a visiting scientist at Technical University of Darmstadt and at the German accelerator center DESY (Hamburg). His research activities were dedicated to beam physics in linear accelerators for electron-positron colliders and free electron lasers. In 1998 he defended a doctoral thesis on this topic and initiated a group of Beam physics at Yerevan Physics Institute.
In 2002, under his scientific leadership, a new CANDLE third generation synchrotron light facility project in Armenia was developed and accordingly CANDLE Institute was founded. In 2006-2012 he headed the Nuclear Physics Department of Yerevan State University. In 2011 V. Tsakanov was elected as a member of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA).
In 2012-2015 he led the construction of AREAL laser driven RF gun based electron linear accelerator at CANDLE for experimental research in the fields of advanced accelerator concepts and ultrafast sciences. As a further development of AREAL facility it is anticipated to create a free-electron laser to be completed in 2020-2022.