Michael Borland, Associate Division Director of the Argonne Accelerator Systems Division of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in the Photon Sciences Directorate, is one of four Argonne National Laboratory scientists named as Argonne Distinguished Fellows for 2014, the Laboratory’s highest scientific and engineering rank. The Argonne Distinguished Fellow title is comparable in stature to an endowed chair at a top-ranked university and recognizes exceptional contributions in a person's field. The rank is given for sustained outstanding scientific and engineering research and can also be associated with outstanding technical leadership of major, complex, high-priority projects.
Michael Borland received a B.S. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1991. In 2013, Borland received the Asian Committee on Future Accelerators IPAC13 Prize for Accelerator Science, for a recent, significant contribution to the accelerator field. This was in recognition of his leadership in developing the program ELEGANT and the SDDS Toolkit, as well as his discovery of the coherent synchrotron radiation microbunching instability in magnetic bunch compressors. Also in 2013, he shared the APS Compton Award in recognition of his role in the implementation of top-up mode at the APS. In 2007, Borland received a University of Chicago Distinguished Performance Award for his work on software for accelerator research and he also was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 1996, he was co-recipient of a University of Chicago Distinguished Performance Award for his role in the design and commissioning of the APS accelerator complex.
Borland, who has been with the APS since 1991, began his work in accelerator-related software nearly 30 years ago. His best-known work, named "ELEGANT," is an accelerator simulation code that provides physicists world-wide with a flexible tool to design and understand linear accelerators and storage rings. ELEGANT, the primary tool at the APS for accelerator design and simulation was used to develop the present APS storage ring low-emittance lattice (the configuration of magnet strengths) and played an essential role in the development of top-up mode at the APS. ELEGANT is also used to design and understand free electron lasers (FELs), including the world's first hard x-ray FEL, the Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
For over a decade, Borland has led efforts to develop upgrade options for the APS, including energy recovery linacs and ultra-bright storage rings. In the process, he played a leading role in the application of direct, multi-objective genetic methods to the design of storage ring lattices. Presently, he leads the beam physics effort for the APS Upgrade, which centers on the development of an ultra-low emittance lattice that promises to make the APS the brightest storage-ring source of hard x-rays in the world.
The other three 2014 Argonne Distinguished Fellows are U. (Balu) Balachandran in the Energy Systems Division, Yousry Gohar in the Nuclear Engineering Division, and Paul Messina in the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility.
The complete Argonne news story can be read here.