IMSA celebrates 30, pays homage to Lederman

The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy celebrated its 30th anniversary March 30 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a panel on STEM education featuring Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer.

IMSA was originally conceived in 1982 by Fermilab’s second director, Leon Lederman, on the principle that advancing STEM education was vital to scientific and societal progress. With the help of then-Illinois Governor Jim Thompson, IMSA was established in 1985 and opened to students the next year. As a public residential college prep academy, IMSA students come from across the state to live on its campus in Aurora and learn through a rigorous curriculum.

The school’s anniversary theme, “Think.Different.Act.Bold,” owes much to Lederman.

“Creativity is the thing we want to foster the most. We’re not terribly interested in IQs or phenomenal memories,” Lederman said in a 1990 interview about IMSA.

At the ceremony, IMSA president Jose Torres acknowledged this mission, affirming his faith that IMSA students and alumni would work creatively to change society for the better, addressing problems such as those outlined in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

At IMSA, hands-on learning, including a research collaboration with over 70 leading institutions and entrepreneurship programs, takes center stage.

Tech journalist John Pletz moderated the panel on STEM education, which in addition to Lockyer also included three notable IMSA alumni: YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, International Human Rights Clinic Director Claudia Flores, and Impact Engine CEO Jessica Droste Yagan. In a wide-ranging discussion, the panel talked about diverse topics such as the importance of community to science and apps for buying groceries.

Chen, who funded a new center for innovation at IMSA, attributed his success to the freedom he had at IMSA to explore his interest in computer programming. Flores spoke about the power of being around passionate and differently skilled people.

Highlighting IMSA’s connection to Fermilab, Lockyer said, “We want more students from IMSA at Fermilab. We’ve had hundreds over the years. It always brings in outside-the-box creativity.”

Demonstrating just that kind of creativity, IMSA students used virtual-reality technology to simulate the ribbon-cutting, manipulating virtual scissors to cut virtual ribbon to release virtual balloons — all displayed for the audience on a projected screen.

Every year, dozens of IMSA students do research at Fermilab. Pranav Sivakumar, a senior at IMSA who works with Fermilab physicist Brian Nord, was named a finalist in the Google Science Fair for his research on quasar lensing.

IMSA gives its students Wednesdays off to pursue extracurricular activities. Like many students, Sivakumar uses his time to pursue research, coming to Fermilab every week to work on quasars.

This symbiotic relationship between Fermilab and places like IMSA is key to both of their success, according to Pletz.

“National labs understand need for talent, which places like this are designed to find and grow and nurture,” he said.

Late April is always a special time of year at Fermilab. Spring is in the air, the leaves are green, the birds are singing, and adorable baby bison are born.

Baby bison season is here, and all are welcome to visit with and photograph the newborns. (They’re always a hit with young children.) Fermilab is expecting the new babies to be joined by at least 10 more over the next six weeks. The site is open every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and admission is free. You’ll need a valid photo ID to enter the site.

Fermilab’s first director, Robert Wilson, established the bison herd in 1969 as a symbol of the history of the Midwestern prairie and the laboratory’s pioneering research at the frontiers of particle physics. The herd remains a major attraction for families and wildlife enthusiasts.

And thanks to the science of genetic testing, Fermilab’s ecologist Ryan Campbell confirmed that the laboratory’s herd is 100 percent bison, with no cattle genes. Farmers during the early settlement era would breed bison with other bovine species to keep them from extinction, but Fermilab’s bison are purebred.

A herd of pure bison is a natural fit for a prairie ecosystem, like the kind that exists on the Fermilab site. Fermilab hosts 1,100 acres of reconstructed tall-grass prairie.

While you’re at the Fermilab site visiting the bison, you can learn more about our ecological efforts by hiking the Interpretive Prairie Trail, a half-mile-long trail located near the Pine Street entrance in Batavia. The Lederman Science Center also offers exhibits on the prairie and hands-on physics displays. The Lederman Center hours are Monday-Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. And the 15th floor of Wilson Hall is open to the public Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

For up-to-date information for visitors, please visit www.fnal.gov or call 630-840-3351. To learn more about Fermilab’s bison herd, please visit the wildlife area of our website.

Check out this video of the newborn baby bison.

Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC. Visit Fermilab’s website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter @Fermilab.

The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://science.energy.gov.

In particle physics, the difference of a millimeter or two can make or break an experiment. In March, the LArIAT experiment began a proof-of-concept test to make sure the planned Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will work well with that 2-millimeter difference.

Specifically, scientists are looking at what will happen when you increase the space between detection wires inside the future DUNE detectors.

DUNE will measure neutrinos, mysterious particles that are ubiquitous but elusive and may hold answers to questions about the origins of the universe.

Like the future DUNE detectors, LArIAT is filled with liquid argon. When a particle strikes an argon nucleus inside the detector, the interaction creates electrons that float through the argon until they’re captured by a wire, which registers a signal. Scientists measure the signal to learn about the particle interaction.

Unlike the DUNE detectors, LArIAT does not detect neutrinos. Rather, it uses the interactions of other particle types to make inferences about neutrino interactions. And very unlike DUNE, LArIAT is the size of a mini-fridge, a mere speck compared to DUNE’s detectors, which will hold about 22 Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of liquid argon.

LArIAT scientists use a beam of charged particles provided by the Fermilab Test Beam Facility that are fired into the liquid argon. These particles interact with matter far more than neutrinos do, so the beam results in many more interactions than a similar beam of neutrinos, which would mostly pass through the argon. The higher level of interactions is what allows LArIAT to forgo the massive size of DUNE.

Results from LArIAT may help physicists better understand other liquid-argon neutrino detectors at the DOE Office of Science’s Fermilab such as MicroBooNE and SBND.

“The point of the LArIAT experiment is to measure how well we can identify the various types of particles that come out of neutrino interactions and how well we can reconstruct their energy,” said Jen Raaf, LArIAT spokesperson.

Although LArIAT doesn’t detect neutrinos, the charged-particle interactions can give scientists clues about how neutrinos interact with argon nuclei.

“Instead of sending a neutrino in and looking at what stuff comes out, you send the other stuff in and see what it does,” Raaf said.

Interactions in LArIAT are characterized primarily by a mesh of wires that detects the drift electrons. One key factor that affects the accuracy of drift-electron detection is the spacing between each wire.

“The closer together your wires are, the better spatial resolution you get,” Raaf said. But the more closely spaced the wires are, the more wires that are needed. More wires means more electronics to detect signals from the wires, which can become expensive in a giant detector such as DUNE.

To keep costs down, scientists are investigating whether DUNE will have a high enough resolution in its measurements of neutrino interactions with wires spaced 5 millimeters apart — larger than the 3-millimeter spacing in smaller Fermilab neutrino experiments such as MicroBooNE.

Simulations suggest that it should work, but it’s up to Raaf and her team to test whether or not 5-millimeter spacing will do the job.

LArIAT uses the Fermilab Test Beam Facility, which is an important part of the equation. The facility’s test beam originates from the lab’s accelerators and passes through a set of particle detection instruments before arriving at the LArIAT detector. Scientists can then compare the results from the first set of instruments with the LArIAT results.

“If you know that it was truly a pion going in to the detector, and then you run your algorithm on it and it says ‘Oh no that was an electron,’ you’re like ‘I know you’re wrong!’” Raaf said.  “So you just compare how often you’re wrong with 5 millimeters versus 3 millimeters.”

She and her team are optimistic, but committed to being thorough.

“It works in theory, but we always like to measure,” she said.

This research receives support from the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.