News and features

Fermilab Distinguished Scientist Patricia McBride was invited to Santa Monica, California to accept the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on behalf of the CMS collaboration.

A Fermilab-led computing project received the second-largest award and was the largest particle physics project granted supercomputer time from the DOE Office of Science INCITE program. The project will continue to further explore numerical simulations to address questions in particle physics.

At the Sanford Underground Research Facility, hovercraft technology is being used to efficiently move massive steel beams for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility/Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Named after a beloved workhorse at the former gold mine that now contains the science facility, “Maggie II” is an innovative solution for the challenges of transporting heavy, awkwardly shaped beams underground to construct one of the largest physics experiments in the world.

Amy Nam, the 2025 Fermi Forward Discovery Group Guest Composer, will use her musical talents to transform complex physics concepts from research at Fermilab into accessible auditory experiences for the public. Through her project, “The Harp Inside Schrödinger’s Box,” Nam aims to blend original harp music and spoken word to both educate and engage new audiences with quantum physics research.

Jelena Berenc is the Fermi Forward Discovery Group 2025 Guest Artist at Fermilab, where she will collaborate with scientists to create artwork inspired by their research. Her innovative approach, called information realism, allows her to explore complex scientific concepts through visual language, offering the public a unique perspective into the work at Fermilab.

Over 100 participants convened at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory for the 2025 CMS Data Analysis School, an intensive program dedicated to preparing the next generation of physicists for work on the CMS experiment at CERN. Hosted by the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab, the week-long event included lectures, hands-on exercises and collaborative analysis projects designed to enhance participants’ expertise in particle physics data analysis.

Sowjanya Gollapinni has been elected as the new co-spokesperson for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, succeeding Mary Bishai. Gollapinni is a senior scientist and the Neutrino Group Leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory and has been involved with DUNE since 2015. Now, she will co-lead the project to its next stages of development.

A large and unexpected excess of top quark pairs has the physics community excited, but the interpretation is still up for debate.

Fermilab is finalizing a partnership with Diraq and several universities for the Quandarum project. The project team intends to combine extreme environment electronics and silicon spin qubits to develop a quantum sensor that could profoundly impact the field of high-energy physics.

A new data release from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is now available for researchers to explore. The collection contains information on 18.7 million galaxies, quasars, and stars — the largest dataset of its kind ever shared.