Prof. Gary Sanders, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Project manager, and his team members Eric Williams, Rob Bernier and Virginia Ford visited CIOMP from 22th to 27th of April. Up to now, TMT delegation has visited CIOMP for 5 times. The main purpose of this visit was to have a face to face discussion on the Plans for M3 Mirror polishing and testing and listen to the Status report of CIOMP progress on TMT M3S.

During their stay in the institute, Prof. Sanders presented two lectures with the titles of “The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Project: An International Partnership” and “TMT System Safety”. The lectures were presided over by Prof. Zhang Xuejun, vice-president of CIOMP.

The American guests were also invited to tour the CIOMP laboratories for academic exchange. The research units visited by the American scientists included the key Laboratory of Optical System Advanced Manufacturing Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences, the photoelectric detection group.

Prof. Gary Sanders

Dr. Gary Sanders enjoyed not only an outstanding career in physics, he is also an exceptional manager of large science projects. He has spent 25 years performing high-energy physics experiments at laboratories in the United States and Europe.

He earned his PhD in high-energy physics from the MIT. He has been a faculty member in physics at Princeton University and a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In 1994, Gary joined Caltech to serve as the Project Manager and Deputy Director for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. Gary joined TMT as its Project Manager in 2004. He is the author or a co-author of more than 175 peer-reviewed publications and he has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.