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Funding will go towards NSF-led AI Research Institutes and DOE QIS Research Centers over five years, establishing 12 multidisciplinary and multi-institutional national hubs for research and workforce development in these critical emerging technologies. Together, the institutes will spur cutting-edge innovation, support regional economic growth and advance American leadership in these critical industries of the future.

Fermilab has been selected to lead one of five national centers to bring about transformational advances in quantum information science as a part of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative. The initiative provides the new Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center — based at Fermilab and comprising 20 partner institutions — $115 million over five years with the goal of building and deploying a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies. The center will also develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles.

The international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment collaboration has published a paper about its capability for performing supernova physics. It details the kind of activity DUNE expects in the detector during a supernova burst, how DUNE will know once a supernova occurs and what physics DUNE will extract from the neutrinos. DUNE’s unique strength is its sensitivity to a particular type of neutrino called the electron neutrino, which will provide scientists with supernova data not available from any other experiment.

Scientists know the Higgs boson interacts with extremely massive particles. Now, they’re starting to study how it interacts with lighter particles as well.

The MINOS+ and Daya Bay neutrino experiments combine results to produce most stringent test yet for the existence of sterile neutrinos.

Cornell University postdoc David Sweigart has won the 2020 URA Thesis Award for his dissertation analyzing the first year’s data from Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment. His efforts in analyzing the anomalous precession frequency of the muon could help confirm or challenge the Standard Model of particle physics.

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have used observations of the smallest known galaxies to better understand dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. The smallest galaxies can contain hundreds to thousands of times more dark matter than normal visible matter, making them ideal laboratories for studying this mysterious substance. By performing a rigorous census of small galaxies surrounding our Milky Way, scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have been able to constrain the fundamental particle physics that governs dark matter.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN have announced new results that show that the Higgs boson decays into two muons. US CMS — the United States contingent of the global CMS collaboration — played a crucial role in this result, contributing to the excellent performance of CMS detector.

Fermilab scientist Robert Ainsworth has won a $2.5 million Department of Energy Early Career Research Award to study different ways of ensuring stability in high-intensity proton beams. By studying how certain types of beam instabilities emerge and evolve under different conditions, his team can help sharpen scientists’ methods for correcting them or avoiding them to begin with.

No one knows for sure what dark matter is. But we know we need something to explain what we see in the universe, and we’ve crossed a few ideas off of our list.