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We take the opportunity afforded by this editorial to welcome the new elected Spokesperson of the Virgo Collaboration: good luck, Jean Yves! Even if he has been with Virgo since the beginning – and before many of us – we will ask him to write an article about himself and his views for the future, to be published in h20.
We also thank very much the previous Spokesperson, with the same sentence: good luck, Francesco! He needs best wishes for his new role as the Director of the Physics department at the University of Pisa.
The past few months have been a time of evident intense activity, discussing the technical choices for Advanced Virgo to be submitted to the STAC and to the EGO Council. After the double approval, we are now in an apparently quiet moment, taking science data in the VSR4 run. In reality, intense activity goes on in parallel, since we have to prepare for some more commissioning at the end of the run and, immediately afterwards, for the challenging transition to Advanced Virgo. Advanced LIGO is already progressing ahead of us.
In autumn 2011, outreach activity will also restart with momentum. On 23-24 September we will have our third European ResearchersÂ’ Night and from November 21 to December 3 we will participate in an astronomy exhibition at La Limonaia, in Pisa.
C.Bradaschia
Chief Editor
