Whether at work or in his personal life, Fermilab ecologist Wally Levernier enjoys the great outdoors. Photo: Wally Levernier
What is your role at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory?
I have been the lab ecologist since October 2018. The ecologist at Fermilab has many roles. I am the chair of the Ecological Land Management Committee, which meets monthly and helps direct the ecology at the lab. I coordinate National Environmental Research Park projects at the lab; this is a designation that allows outside environmental researchers to come to Fermilab and study many aspects of the environment. I am also liaison to Fermilab Natural Areas, the organization that helps to monitor and manage the ecology of Fermilab.
On a day-to-day basis, I conduct invasive species control, collect native seed, conduct plant surveys of our natural areas, plan special projects, lead prescribed burns, help coordinate new construction to minimize environmental impacts, lead FNA workdays, work with the education center for educational opportunities. The job is incredibly diverse.
How did you become interested in ecology?
I have been interested in ecology before I knew what ecology was. When I was young, I spent most of my time outdoors chasing frogs, fishing, and gardening with my grandfather. I also went to outdoor camps in grade school over the summer at McHenry County Conservation District.
What do you like best about working at Fermilab?
The natural areas at Fermilab are unique. The history of the prairie restoration is one of the things I like most. Fermilab started prairie restoration in the mid-70s before it was a common practice. I also enjoy working with FNA; they are dedicated to and passionate about restoration and the environment.
What are the projects you’re working on now with Fermilab?
We have planned some special restoration projects with FNA to restore more suitable nesting habitat for rapidly declining grassland and shrubland nesting bird species.
In the Eola Grassland project, we are planning on removing brush in order to create better nesting habitat. These bird species require large areas that have no trees and few shrubs to nest. We are experimenting with different methods — prescribed burning versus frequent mowing — to see if there is a treatment that nesting birds prefer.
In the Sparrow Hedge, which is shrubland by A.E. Sea, we are planning on trying to create a diverse habitat of native shrubs by removing all trees and non-native shrubs. This is very difficult habitat to restore and maintain. This habitat tends to transition between prairie and savanna/woodland so it is difficult to try and make it somewhat static. It is basically a mixture of grasses, sedges and wildflowers with intermixed shrub clumps. These clumps vary in species, size, distance between clumps, etc. to try to accommodate the preferences of many species.
What are FNA workdays?
Fermilab Natural Areas workdays are where members of FNA come on site to assist with natural areas management activities. Each workday is different. During the winter and spring, we tend to conduct invasive bush removal. Summer and fall workdays tend to be a mixture of brush removal and native seed collection; we manage other invasive species as well. It is a great community-building activity.
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
Knowing that you are working to preserve plant and animal species in the region, many of which are in decline, is rewarding. So is helping people to learn about and become passionate about nature and ecology. We need more people to care about and interact with the environment.
What is the most challenging part of your work?
We are a small group and depend on the support of others to accomplish our goals. We are only able to complete a portion of what needs to be completed.
One way we prioritize is by determining areas of rare plants and animals and work on those areas. We also identify communities that are in better shape and try to preserve those first. Discussion and planning from the ELM committeealso helps to determine priorities.
Does the lab mark any ecological observances?
Yes. Events are held during the week of Earth Day, and all of the topics have relevance to the environment. This year, I led a virtual wildflower walk on Thursday, April 21, where I also discussed the ecology of Fermilab.
Also, in the past, our Roads and Grounds group has held an Arbor Day planting, which occurs during Earth Week. We hope to continue this again next year.
What do you like to do when you are not working?
I enjoy being outdoors. We hike with our dog in local forest preserves. We enjoy traveling and birding. I also enjoy photography.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The 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 science.energy.gov.
The U.S. Department of Energy has formally approved the start of full construction for the PIP-II project, an essential upgrade to the accelerator complex at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The heart of the project is a powerful new superconducting linear accelerator that will enable the world’s most intense high-energy neutrino beam.
The milestone, known as Critical Decision 3, authorizes the project to begin full-scale procurement and construction. It builds on the March 2021 approval for a preliminary construction start, which enabled work on key elements needing longer preparation times. This included cutting-edge technologies such as superconducting and high-power radio frequency systems and instrumentation.
The PIP-II project received CD-3 approval from the U.S. Department of Energy. When complete, it will provide more powerful beams of protons to Fermilab experiments. This rendering shows the site of the PIP-II complex on the Fermilab campus. Image: Fermilab
“We are elated to have reached this crucial step for PIP-II,” said Lia Merminga, Fermilab director and former PIP-II project director. “Our team around the world has worked tirelessly to prepare for this moment. The planning has paid off, and we are excited to move into the construction phase, knowing it will make incredible new science possible.”
Of critical importance to PIP-II’s success are its partners around the world; PIP-II is the first particle accelerator built on U.S. soil with significant contributions from international collaborators. Institutions in France, India, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States will bring together their expertise and capabilities in superconducting radio frequency and associated technologies to construct the state-of-the-art particle accelerator at Fermilab.
When PIP-II is complete, Fermilab will be able to generate proton beams greater than 1 megawatt—60 percent higher than current capabilities. The versatile accelerator is designed to support a variety of research and will be able to send customized proton beams to different experiments.
One crucial use of the beam will be to create neutrinos for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) hosted by Fermilab. More than 1,000 researchers working on DUNE will study these elusive particles, which could hold clues to the evolution of our universe and several long-standing mysteries in physics.
“Fermilab’s accelerators powered experiments that made significant breakthroughs over the past 50 years,” said Nigel Lockyer, former Fermilab director. “The formal construction start for PIP-II means we are one step closer to enhancing our facilities and supporting the next 50 years of physics discoveries.”
In addition to refurbishing some of the lab’s existing accelerators, PIP-II will install a powerful new superconducting accelerator at the start of the accelerator chain. The unique first section will allow scientists to customize the beam for multiple experiments operating simultaneously. The accelerator will also use new advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver beam quickly, reliably and with minimal human intervention.
The PIP-II collaboration is an international team made up of scientists from France, India, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Photo: Fermilab
PIP-II is expected to be complete in the late 2020s, and the project has already reached several milestones. Construction on the building that will house the cryogenic plant — a major in-kind contribution from a PIP-II partner agency, India’s Department of Atomic Energy — and utilities for the superconducting accelerator are nearly complete at Fermilab, and successful tests at the PIP-II Injector Test Facility validated critical technologies and demonstrated the exceptional performance of two cryomodules, the building blocks of the accelerator.
“The successful review shows yet again that Fermilab is poised to be a worldwide leader in accelerator-based discovery neutrino science, and PIP-II will be an essential contributor to the lab’s prestige. The Department of Energy looks forward to the decades of discoveries that will be made possible by this accelerator upgrade,” said DOE acting HEP director Harriet Kung.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator 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, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, Inc. Visit Fermilab’s website and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.
As a musician, Suzie Shrubb has always looked up to the skies for inspiration. The music of the universe and its particles has always fascinated them, which is why their appointment as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s guest composer this year makes perfect sense.
Fermilab’s 2022 guest composer Suzie Shrubb, who sees music and physics as one in the same, considers this yearlong residency as chance to musically express the energy and sounds of the science at Fermilab. Photo: Suzie Shrubb
Based in the United Kingdom, Shrubb, who uses both they/them and she/her as pronouns, is a composer as well as a classical and improvising musician who plays the piano and the oboe. They currently work with the Hurly Burly Theatre in the UK. Their previous collaborations have included work as a resident artist with the Oxford Playhouse, Lancaster University and Royal Opera House, among others.
Now in its third year, Fermilab’s guest composer program fosters the relationship and engagement between scientists, composers and the public. According to Shrubb, their yearlong online residency at Fermilab is a chance to musically express the energy and sounds of the science at the lab. From conversations with physicists to the specific noises of technology in experiments, these sounds and experiences all will inspire her body of work, which will be presented to the community at the end of the residency.
In some ways, her appointment at Fermilab is the culmination of two lifelong passions – music and physics. Shrubb has been a musician their whole life and started playing piano as a toddler.
“When I was a child, all of the Voyager and Pioneer data started coming back. I was fascinated by that,” said Shrubb. “Also, my mother would teach me all the constellations at night when I couldn’t sleep. So, I was very lucky in that respect; these ideas were always wafting around in my life.”
Shrubb said that at a certain point they just started to think of music and physics as one in the same. They drew inspiration from various ideas: the ancient Greek concept of music of the spheres (the idea that the movements of celestial bodies, such as the sun, the moon and the planets, are a form of music), great cosmic fugues, and various cosmologies of gods singing the cosmos into being.
“I feel like a musical space is a context through which we can take these particle physics systems that are a description of a reality and then translate them. It’s an expression and a relationship,” said Shrubb.
Shrubb has previously been a guest speaker for VOICES, or Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song, to share their work on translating neutrino oscillations into musical notation. At Fermilab, they have already begun talking to physicists about using experimental data for composition. Even though Shrubb does not have a particle physics academic background, she hopes that by engaging in dialogue with various Fermilab scientists, she can create pieces of music that are very specific to their field of research or work.
For instance, Shrubb is taking the mapped movement of a proton going through a detector to create a musical score that illustrates the proton’s journey. To do so, she first converts the mass or energy of the quarks that make up the proton into hertz and then translates that into scientific pitch notation, which can be played on any musical instrument. But as Shrubb pointed out, the science can inspire multiple different approaches and interpretations, including improvisation.
“The proton just becomes a set of instructions for our musicians. We all begin here, and we all know we’re going to end there. The piece is us going on this journey to find that beginning and ending place,” they said. “Working within the constraints of the journey, musicians can then improvise how they end up from start to finish.”
“I feel like a musical space is a context through which we can take these particle physics systems that are a description of a reality and then translate them.” — Suzie Shrubb, Fermilab 2022 guest composer
Shrubb noted that this interpretation may not necessarily speak to the truth of what’s going on with the particles. In order to reflect that, they are going to translate the data of the image to map the different energy levels to different pitches and notes.
“Suzie’s deep passion for, and prior experience in, melding physics and music composition made her a natural fit for this Fermilab adventure. Collaboration is such a huge part of Suzie’s music-making, working with various volunteer choirs and other groups, even through COVID,” said Janet MacKay-Galbraith, who manages Fermilab’s guest composer program, which explores the relationship between art and science.
“In fact, Suzie had already worked with [Fermilab scientist] Elena Gramellini, providing a musical backdrop for Elena’s 2021 Physics Slam film, before even starting their residency.”
Pulling from their previous work, Shrubb hopes to eventually run improvisation sessions for anyone musically inclined at Fermilab, so that people can gather and bounce ideas back and forth to create music together. They also plan to give a talk during their residency, explaining their process behind translating scientific data into music.
“They bring great enthusiasm to our guest composer program and is a terrific representative of the relationship between art/music and science,” added MacKay-Galbraith.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The 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 science.energy.gov.