Fermilab features
Hector Carranza Jr. of the University of Texas at Arlington has received the prestigious Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research award, or SCGSR, to conduct his research at Fermilab. DOE awarded the fellowship to 62 students from U.S. universities. He will work on light-mass dark matter searches at the ICARUS neutrino experiment.
The detector for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will collect massive amounts of data from star-born and terrestrial neutrinos. A single supernova burst could provide as much as 100 terabytes of data. A worldwide network of computers will provide the infrastructure and bandwidth to help store and analyze it. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, scientists are writing software to mine the data – to better understand supernovae and the evolution of our universe.
Hard to believe you can play pool with neutrinos, but certain neutrino events are closer to the game than you think. These special interactions involve a neutrino — famously elusive — striking a particle inside a nucleus like a billiard ball. MINERvA scientists study the dynamics of this subatomic ricochet to learn about the neutrino that triggered the collision. Now they have measured the probability of these quasielastic interactions using Fermilab’s medium-energy neutrino beam. Such measurements are important for current and future neutrino experiments.
An ensemble of soprano, strings, piano and electronics gives voice to the mysterious neutrino in David Ibbett’s latest musical work as Fermilab guest composer. Mapping the waves of neutrino oscillation onto melodies played by the strings, Ibbett sonifies a neutrino phenomenon typically represented in abstract mathematical expressions. Hear the performance and Ibbett’s comments in this four-minute video.
Typically, Fermilab employee Keenan Newton spends his days managing Fermilab’s main content management platforms and his nights and weekends as a volunteer firefighter. Now he’s arranged his schedule to serve the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, volunteering his personal time to help people during the current pandemic and responding to hazardous situations while based at the State Emergency Operations Center in Springfield.
Mauricio Suarez has been with Fermilab for only a few months, yet he has already taken full command promoting a key aspect of the lab’s mission: to develop new technologies for science that support U.S. industrial competitiveness. As the person in charge of connecting Fermilab with industry partners, Suarez is leading the way for the lab to foster innovation and advance technologies for the benefit of society.