award

Scientist and 2021 URA Early Career Award winner stands at a chalkboard working on equations.

Fermilab’s Pedro Machado has won the 2021 Universities Research Association Early Career Award for his theoretical work on neutrino science that helps experimentalists with novel search strategies and scientific questions worth exploring.

The annual Universities Research Association Thesis Award recognizes outstanding work for a thesis conducted at or in collaboration with Fermilab. Zhang’s winning Ph.D. dissertation included insights into both physics searches and equipment upgrades at the Large Hadron Collider’s CMS detector. Fermilab serves as the U.S. hub for CMS.

Portrait of a man with dark hair and a short beard and mustache wearing glasses, a brown corduroy jacket, a red and blue plaid shirt. His hands are interlaced on the table in front of him. In the lower left corner, the keyboard of a laptop peeks out. He is in front of a starry background.

What if human analysis, combined with machine learning, could advance the study of the universe? The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Fermilab scientist Brian Nord a $2.5 million Early Career Research Award to explore that possibility. Nord has envisioned a new hybrid data-analysis method to undertake the project. It integrates the strengths of artificial intelligence and interpretations of statistics in ways that could potentially advance the studies of cosmology.

Fahim AI on-chip data processing work

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Farah Fahim an Early Career Research Award to investigate how deploying neural networks and machine learning on a particle detector can allow data processing at source. Her work could make data processing at detectors more efficient, improving fundamental research at physics facilities like the LHC at CERN.

On the left, Portrait of a woman smiling beside a microscope in front of a purple background. Her right hand sits on a table and is holding a chip. She wears a mustard-colored floral hijab and fuschia top. On the right, Portrait of a man with dark curly hair and a short beard and mustache wearing glasses, a brown corduroy jacket, a red and blue plaid shirt. His hands are interlaced on the table in front of him. In the lower left corner, the keyboard of a laptop peeks out. He is in front of a starry background.

The DOE’s Office of Science has selected two Fermilab scientists to receive the 2021 DOE Early Career Research Award, now in its 12th year. Farah Fahim and Brian Nord have received the prestigious award, which is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early years.