Fermilab announces Bonnie Fleming as new deputy director and chief research officer

Bonnie Fleming

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Director Lia Merminga announced that Bonnie Fleming has been named Fermilab’s chief research officer and deputy director responsible for leading all areas of science and technology, effective Sept. 6, 2022.

Fleming is a familiar member of the Fermilab community, having worked on Fermilab experiments since 1997. Currently the lab’s advisor for science and technology, she began her career at Fermilab as a Columbia University graduate student, working on the NuTeV experiment and later as a Lederman Fellow working on MiniBooNE.

“Bonnie is uniquely qualified to serve as the new Fermilab’s deputy director for science and technology and chief research officer,” Merminga said. “As an internationally recognized expert in neutrino physics, the founding spokesperson for the ArgoNeuT and the MicroBooNE neutrino experiments, and a pioneer in developing the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers detector technology employed for these experiments as well as for the international DUNE experiment hosted by Fermilab, Bonnie brings vast experience, expertise, enthusiasm and collaboration to her new role.”

Fleming has served on several community panels in particle physics, including the 2014 P5 High Energy Physics Advisory Panel subpanel, and more recently, she was the co-chair for the DOE Basic Research Needs on Instrumentation and the ongoing HEPAP subpanel on International Benchmarking, as well as a member of the current National Academies Decadal Survey in particle physics.

“Fermilab has always been like home to me,” Fleming said. “I look forward to my new role and working with my colleagues toward Fermilab’s scientific vision and mission and to supporting the projects Fermilab has underway now and will execute in the future.”

Since 2004, Fleming has been on faculty at Yale University and will transition to University of Chicago’s faculty as a professor of physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute, also effective Sept. 6.

Fermilab would like to recognize and thank Joe Lykken, Fermilab’s current chief research officer, for his longstanding excellence in lab leadership. Effective Sept. 6, he will continue in his role as head of the Fermilab Quantum Institute and assist with transition of the chief research officer role.