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MarcelleSoares-Santos The Alvin Tollestrup Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Research committee has selected Marcelle Soares-Santos for the 2014 award. Soares-Santos will be recognized at the Fermilab Users Meeting on June 11. In a statement, the award committee, chaired by Daniel Whiteson of the University of California, Irvine, acknowledged Soares-Santos “for her contributions to the Dark Energy Survey, which span from instrument construction and commissioning to high-level physics analysis.” The Universities Research Association gives out the award every year for outstanding work…

Ian Krass (left) and Jim Shultz shoot footage for a new Fermilab video about dark energy. “These videos are not a short lecture. We want it to be visually interesting and also include jokes and more than one character,” Shultz said. Photo: Amanda Solliday As of today, Fermilab’s “What is a Higgs Boson?” video on YouTube has more than a million and a half views. This video and hundreds of others are produced each year by Fermilab’s Visual Media Services….

The newly formed Fermilab Test Beam Committee will help schedule time for experiments at the laboratory’s test beam facility. Photo: Reidar Hahn The Fermilab Test Beam Committee held its first meeting Wednesday, April 23. Director Nigel Lockyer called for the formation of the committee to develop guidelines to help schedule time for experiments at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility and also suggest possible upgrades to the test beamlines. In previous years, about 200 researchers used the test beam facility. This…

Leonard Harbacek inspects a gas distribution manifold he built with engineer Cary Kendziora and senior technician Bill Miner. Harbacek has worked as a Fermilab welder for 16 years. Photo: Reidar Hahn What might you do in typical workday? As a welder, in the morning I might be cutting steel 19 inches thick, and in the afternoon I might be working on a clean cryogenic system. I travel around the Fermilab site with a portable automatic welder, going to different locations…

David Toback The CDF collaboration elected David Toback as co-spokesperson on March 17. The Texas A&M physics professor will join fellow CDF spokesperson Costas Vellidis in leading the experiment. Toback began working with the CDF collaboration in 1991, while he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. But his CDF connection goes back even before his graduate work. Toback has known CDF physicists and mentors Henry Frisch and Mel Shochet since high school and graduated with Shochet’s oldest…

It looks as though spring conditions might soon arrive. Blue sky and rippling water surrounding the barn on the Main Ring cooling pond give reason to hope. Photo: Amanda Solliday

A pair of geese settle on the East Gallery. Photo: Amanda Solliday

Tom Wicks, rigging superintendent at Joliet Steel & Construction, stands next to the stripped-down CDF detector at Fermilab. His mother, Lois Anderson, helped build the detector as an ironworker nearly 30 years ago. Photo: Amanda Solliday One day when Tom Wicks was a child, he biked over to see his mom, Lois Anderson, working at an office in Aurora, Ill. She was at the top of the building, welding and torching as ironworkers do. “That’s when my son told me,…

Debbie Gomez takes care of catering Fermilab events and works in the Wilson Hall cafeteria. Photo: Cindy Arnold How long have you worked at Fermilab? Ten years next month (April). It’s gone by fast. Describe a typical workday. I bake desserts, stock the cafeteria and work as a cashier. I’m also the one who prepares many of the catered meals at parties and meetings. What’s the best part of your job? I like catering. It’s something different every day, and…