Linda Cremonesi stumbled upon neutrinos somewhat by accident. Or maybe it was fate.
As an exchange student from the University of Milan, Cremonesi needed to choose a topic for her final project at Queen Mary University of London. “All the other students that were enrolled had already chosen their projects, so there wasn’t a lot left,” she said.
One of the few remaining topics was neutrinos: tiny, elusive fundamental particles that permeate the universe. “I didn’t know what they were, so I ended up googling things on my phone on the way to meet up with my supervisor,” she recalled.
Since that serendipitous introduction, Cremonesi has never parted from neutrinos. She would go on to work on Japanese neutrino experiments T2K and Hyper-Kamiokande while earning her doctorate. Today, Cremonesi is an associate professor in particle physics and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at Imperial College London. And as of April 1, she is the new co-spokesperson of the international NOvA collaboration.
With NOvA co-spokesperson Fermilab scientist Alex Himmel, Cremonesi will help set research priorities, keep the experiment running smoothly and represent the teams to the outside world.
NOvA — short for NuMI Off-axis νe Appearance — is a long-baseline neutrino experiment managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. It consists of a neutrino detector at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, and a larger detector 500 miles away in Ash River, Minnesota. Physicists generate a powerful neutrino beam at Fermilab, send it through both detectors, and then study how the neutrinos change over time and space. The collaboration can then make insights into neutrino properties, types and phenomena to learn more about the elusive particles that permeate — and could even explain some of the mysteries of — our universe.
“Neutrinos do not give up their secrets easily,” said Himmel. “Even after 10 years of operating NOvA, there is still so much for us to learn.”
“Even after 10 years of operating NOvA, there is still so much for us to learn.”
Alex Himmel, NOvA co-spokesperson
The NOvA collaboration consists of 203 scientists and engineers from 52 institutions in eight countries, and the experiment began fully operating in October 2014. Shortly after, Cremonesi joined as a postdoctoral researcher at University College London. “What really drew me to NOvA was how welcoming it was and how valued I felt from the beginning,” she said. “This is something that I really like about this collaboration, and definitely something that I want to bring forward.”
In 2022, Cremonesi was appointed analysis coordinator, requiring her to oversee the entire physics program of NOvA. In this role, she shepherded the oscillation analysis of 10 years of NOvA data to publication, helped coordinate the first joint analysis with Japanese experiment T2K and enhanced the internal review processes to increase the experiment’s physics output twofold. Running for co-spokesperson was a natural next step.
“My goal is to lead NOvA into its final stage, where we can solidify our findings and cement our scientific legacy.”
Linda Cremonesi, NOvA co-spokesperson
“NOvA is in an exciting transition phase,” she said. “While it is already a mature experiment, we still have another few months of data collection ahead. My goal is to lead NOvA into its final stage, where we can solidify our findings and cement our scientific legacy.”
The experiment is a vital precursor for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility, one of Fermilab’s flagship projects. Once complete, DUNE at LBNF will shoot neutrinos through a near detector at Fermilab to a far detector many hundreds of miles away and observe their properties — just like NOvA. But DUNE’s detectors will be separated by 800 miles rather than NOvA’s 500.
Until DUNE is operational, NOvA is the only long-baseline neutrino experiment in the United States. And there is still work to do and results to uncover. By delivering some of the world’s most precise measurements of neutrino oscillations, NOvA has significantly narrowed down the mass constraints, mass hierarchy, and mixing angles of these elusive particles.
But maximizing this concluding dataset is only part of the vision. By laying the groundwork for ambitious joint analyses with other international experiments, the collaboration aims to push the boundaries of neutrino research long after the beam turns off.
“We have a lot that we can give to the international neutrino community,” Cremonesi said. “And that legacy isn’t just in the data. It’s in ensuring we train the next generation of physicists in an environment that is as supportive and dynamic as the science itself.”
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is America’s national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. Fermi Forward Discovery Group manages Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on social media.
The American Physical Society has honored Christina Wang, a postdoctoral researcher and Lederman Fellow at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, with the prestigious 2026 Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Award in Experimental Particle Physics for developing novel techniques to detect new particles.
Wang received the award for “pioneering a groundbreaking detection technique using the Compact Muon Solenoid detector [at CERN] to search for weakly-coupled sub-GeV mass dark matter via long-lived particle searches, and for groundbreaking work in quantum sensing, allowing researchers to search for types of currently unobservable dark matter.”
Her thesis details two complementary detection techniques that help researchers search for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Standard Model is a well-tested physics theory that explains the fundamental structure of matter. Researchers who study physics beyond the Standard Model, such as Wang, seek to resolve unanswered questions and unexplainable phenomena in high-energy physics that are observable, but not currently accounted for, including the origin of dark matter.
Scientists theorize that dark matter makes up roughly 85% of all matter in the universe. Researchers have never directly observed dark matter. However, they know it exists through observing the gravitational influence it exerts on visible matter. Wang and her collaborators are working diligently to detect and understand this mysterious substance.
Wang’s first approach reinvented how the CMS experiment detects long-lived particles — decaying particles that are notoriously difficult to observe due to their weak interactions with matter. Her method uses the 75 million electronic sensors inside CMS, originally designed to detect muons, to create a shower of secondary long-lived particles, extending their observable state.
The second approach leverages quantum sensing technology to detect individual low-energy photons. Using superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, researchers can search for photons with exceptionally low noise, improving their ability to identify the extremely faint signals that potential dark matter candidates may produce.
“I am deeply honored to receive the Tanaka Award,” said Wang. “Seeing the list of previous recipients makes this award even more meaningful to me.”
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is America’s national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. Fermi Forward Discovery Group manages Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on social media.
When the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Genesis Mission to supercharge artificial intelligence-driven scientific discovery and innovation, it needed more than supercomputers. It required secure, best-in-class infrastructure to store data so researchers across the country could efficiently access the information.
Enter the Fermi Data Platform, or FDP — a system built on thousands of hard drives that make up Fermilab’s scientific storage infrastructure backbone. Selected as a key partner for the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud, Fermilab is providing petabytes of storage, robust data-access tools and deep institutional expertise to ensure the data can be used to its fullest potential for AI-enhanced scientific research.
Fermilab is America’s particle physics laboratory, and decades of working with immense datasets have given its researchers longstanding expertise in scientific data management. Today, the platform supports datasets for multiple experiments and technologies, including measured and simulated data for the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; data from Fermilab’s Short Baseline Neutrino program; and data used in quantum research, microelectronics development and advanced theory work. Fermilab is also preparing for the data needs of the upcoming flagship Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
“At Fermilab, we orchestrate thousands of disks to provide petabytes of storage space, and we make sure researchers can access their data quickly and securely.”
Oliver Gutsche, lead of the Fermi Data Platform project
With data storage and access tools like the Fermi Data Platform, the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud brings together scientific expertise from DOE national laboratories, academic institutions and industry partners. By combining this expertise with advanced AI techniques and the development of new AI models, the American Science Cloud aims to accelerate discovery across disciplines — from high-energy physics to materials science to fusion-energy research.
The American Science Cloud will be an integrated infrastructure with advanced AI services: a system where a researcher can describe what they need and have AI-driven tools tap into national laboratory resources, including supercomputers, scientific datasets and simulation capabilities.
The Genesis Mission’s goal is to reduce the time between asking a scientific question and getting a meaningful answer by automating many of the steps in between — searching relevant scientific publications, running preliminary simulations, filtering results and presenting researchers with a refined picture of where to focus next.
“Give me the 10 most promising materials for batteries — the system does a literature search, runs some simulations to verify, narrows down that list, and presents it as an answer for further research,” said Gutsche. “That is the kind of workflow the Genesis Mission is designed to enable.”
The goal is not to replace researchers or the scientific process — humans still ask the questions and evaluate the answers. Instead, the aim is to enable scientists to work faster and focus on the insights that matter most.
To do any of this at scale, AI systems need data that is accessible, well-organized and what experts call “AI-ready.” Raw scientific data from instruments and detectors often lacks the structure and metadata — the supporting, behind-the-scenes information — that machine learning models require. Part of Fermi Data Platform’s role is to help bridge that gap, storing datasets from Genesis Mission projects and presenting them for model training and inference.
“Data is the common denominator behind major scientific endeavors, and AI is fundamentally data-driven,” said Chin Guok, partner integration level 1 lead for the American Science Cloud. “To train and run AI models, you need large volumes of data. Fermi Data Platform can support AI training and inference on large scientific datasets.”
When the Fermi Data Platform was established as an American Science Cloud infrastructure partner, Fermilab researchers were able to move quickly — offering data storage and data access tools engineered for the kind of active, repeated access that AI-supported research demands. This partnership now allows researchers to leverage DOE resources more seamlessly, laying a powerful foundation for accelerated scientific discovery for the benefit of all.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is America’s national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. Fermi Forward Discovery Group manages Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on social media.