News

Fermilab’s Asian and Pacific American community is one of a number of lab resource groups that strive to promote diversity and inclusion. Fermilab scientist Bo Jayatilaka and engineer Yun He talk about this community and what it means to foster an inclusive and diverse environment.

On April 17, Fermilab hosted its 12th STEM Career Expo. Roughly 1,000 high school students, parents and educators attended the event, where they had the opportunity to meet more than 150 STEM professionals from nearly 40 companies, professional associations and research centers.

Building a particle physics laboratory requires more than physicists. Fermilab archivist Valerie Higgins has authored a paper available in the online physics repository arXiv, and earlier this month she published an op-ed for Physics World on the importance of capturing perspectives from all parts of the laboratory. She sat down with Symmetry writer Lauren Biron to discuss her thoughts.

On Saturday, April 20, baby bison season officially began. The first calf of the year was born in the early morning hours, and mother and baby are doing well. Fermilab is expecting between 12 and 14 new calves this spring, and all of our neighbors are welcome to come on site to see and photograph the newborns.

Fermilab scientists are preparing for future, high-power particle beams with a technological advance inspired by spinning sugar. It’s a new type of target — the material that beams collide with to produce other particles, such as neutrinos. The target is designed to be able to withstand the heat from high-intensity beams, expanding the potential of experiments that use them. Researching this new patent-pending technology already has led to a TechConnect Innovation Award and might have applications in the medical field.

The Event Horizon Telescope—a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration—was designed to capture images of a black hole. On April 10, in coordinated news conferences across the globe, researchers revealed that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. 

On Feb. 26, a team on Fermilab’s MINERvA neutrino experiment gathered around a computer screen to officially conclude its data acquisition. Even with the data collection over, the work marches on. MINERvA now turns its attention to analyzing the data it has collected over the past nine years of its run.

On Wednesday, April 17, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., Fermilab will offer high school students a valuable opportunity to ask STEM career questions in person. The annual STEM Career Expo, held in the atrium of Wilson Hall, will put students face to face with people actually doing the jobs they will be applying for in the coming years.

The optical lenses for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument have seen their first light. Fermilab contributed key components to DESI, including the corrector barrel and its support structures, along with vital software that ensures the instrument’s 5,000 robotic positioners are precisely aligned with their celestial targets.