Press releases

Fermilab scientist Joel Butler has been elected vice chair of its Executive Committee. He will begin as vice chair on Jan. 1, 2020, rotating to chair-elect in 2021 and chair in 2022.

Spack, a software package management tool, was recognized with an R&D 100 Award in November. Developed for high-performance computing applications, Spack is used as an end-to-end development tool within the high-energy physics community. Fermilab is a contributor to Spack, whose initial development was led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Grab your cocoa or pumpkin spice — as today we examine what’s naughty and nice.

Scientists on Fermilab’s MicroBooNE experiment have measured neutrino interactions on argon with unprecedented statistics and precision using data on the resultant muons — in particular, the muon’s momentum and angle. The experiment features the first liquid-argon time projection chamber with the resolution and statistics to carry out such a measurement. Researchers will use the result to improve simulations of neutrino interactions. These improvements are important for neutrino experiments in general, including the Short-Baseline Neutrino program experiments and the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, both hosted by Fermilab.

In November, the Chicago Quantum Exchange held a workshop about ethics and societal impacts of artificial intelligence and quantum computing technologies. Participants from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, from physicists to sociologists, discussed the implications of technology on society and vice versa and identified critical steps scientists need to take so technology is developed and implemented ethically and responsibly.

The year 2019 was a banner one for Albert Einstein: It included the first image of a black hole and the 100th anniversary of the 1919 solar eclipse expeditions that validated his theory of general relativity. Learn more about both, plus topics such as quantum theory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the science (and fiction) of “Game of Thrones” in Symmetry writer Mike Perricone’s annual list of new popular physics books.

Enormous scientific collaborations are made up of hundreds upon thousands of individuals, each with their own story. Online collections of profiles, such as Faces of DUNE, the Dark Energy Survey’s Scientist of the Week blog and Humans of LIGO, reveal the sometimes-ignored human sides of scientists.

Grassellino will help lead the lab’s exciting portfolio for advancing the key technologies in high-energy physics and help oversee the realization of important accelerator projects.

Mingzhi Shen’s career started in finance. Then he discovered that he enjoyed working with numbers in a different way, and he joined Fermilab as a network analyst.

Come and hear McDonald talk about how deep underground experiments help address fundamental questions about neutrino properties and search for dark matter, which makes up 26% of our universe.