Public

The physicist succeeds Marta Cehelsky, who has been at the helm of the Universities Research Association since 2011.

From the DOE Office of Science, Aug. 25: The DOE Office of Science announced 10 DOE national laboratory projects, including one led by Fermilab, have been selected to receive funding as part of research related to microelectronics co-design. Senior engineer Davide Braga’s work on hybrid cryogenic detector architectures for sensing and edge computing enabled by new fabrication processes was chosen as one of the 10 awards.

The Cryogenic Society of America has awarded Benjamin Hansen its Award for Excellence in Cryogenic Operations and Support. Head of Fermilab’s Cryogenics Operations Department, he received the award for his leadership maintaining and operating six helium cryogenic test facilities.

The ATLAS experiment at CERN sees possible evidence of quark-gluon plasma production during collisions between photons and heavy nuclei inside the Large Hadron Collider.

From Physics World, Aug. 24, 2021: A team of physicists in Germany and the US are testing how neutrinos interact with nuclei focusing on how the electron interacts with nuclei using the underlying principles of chiral effective field theories. Read more about how the team aims to carry out first-principles calculations of argon nuclei which will be used as a detector target in the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).

From Phys.org, August 24, 2021: Using the powerful 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) created and tested by Fermilab for the DES, astronomers have discovered an asteroid with the shortest orbital period of any known asteroid in the Solar System.

From the Black Hills Pioneer, Aug. 21, 2021: The former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, SD was dedicated as the M. Michael Rounds Operations Center at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The dedication event included remarks from many dignitaries including Sanford Lab Executive Director Mike Headley, who talked about the long journey it has been to support the new facility and that Sanford Lab has made great strides toward building the LBNF that will house the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at 4,850 level, led by Fermilab.

From The Rapid City Journal, August 12, 2021: The SURF Davis-Bahcall Scholars Program exposes university freshmen and sophomores in STEM fields to a variety of disciplines helping them decide their college major. This year students took a tour of SURF in Lead, SD and they had the opportunity to speak with scientists and engineers from Fermilab.

CERN deepens its collaboration with the US-based neutrino experiment with the provision of two enormous stainless-steel vessels for DUNE’s cutting-edge liquid-argon detectors.

Back when it was theorized, scientists weren’t sure they would ever detect the neutrino. Now scientists, including some at Fermilab, are searching for a version of the particle that could be even more elusive.