In Memoriam: Vincent Castillo
January 9, 2015
Vincent Castillo of Brookhaven Lab's Collider-Accelerator Department died on Nov. 3, 2014. He was 73.
Castillo arrived in the Physics Department as a technician IV on June 4, 1979. He was then promoted to senior technician on Oct. 1, 1979, before transferring to the Accelerator Department the next month. He was promoted to principal technician in 1980, technical specialist in 1981, physics associate III in 1984, physics associate II in 1986, and engineer II in 2012.
As test team leader, Castillo carried out extensive practice runs several times a year to ensure that safety systems worked properly for the Lab's vast accelerator complex, which includes the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, Alternating Gradient Synchrotron—which is home to three of the Lab's seven Nobel Prize-winning discoveries—the Brookhaven Linear Isotope Producer, NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, and Tandem Van de Graaff facilities. With his expertise in electrical engineering, he also contributed to developing beam profile monitors and other detectors for researchers at the Lab.
C-AD Controls Group Leader Jonathan Reich, Castillo's supervisor, said, "Our safety systems include thousands of pages with hundreds of procedures and Vincent was the perfect person to oversee testing them. He was meticulous, methodical, and patient—always straightforward and honest."
Castillo's colleague in C-AD, Technical Supervisor Rich Conte, said, "Vincent would go out of his way to help people learn. He took his time showing people how things worked and helped lots of summer students too. He was strong-minded, very friendly, and really, just a great guy."
As an electrical engineer, he also worked with members of the Instrumentation Division to develop detectors.
Castillo was predeceased by his wife, Alma, and survived by his daughters Tara and Jerri.
2015-5347 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
