Illinois

From Northern Star, Oct. 26, 2020: Northern Illinois University’s STEM Fest features presentations and activities for all ages, including opportunities to chat with STEM experts from Fermilab and Argonne.

Fermilab and partners in northern Illinois have established the region as a leader in particle accelerator science and technology. Few places in the world boast such a concentrated effort in particle acceleration research, developing and building cutting-edge particle accelerators, and growing an accelerator-focused workforce.

The U.S. Department of Energy unveils a report that lays out a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet, bringing the United States to the forefront of the global quantum race and ushering in a new era of communications. This report provides a pathway to ensure the development of the National Quantum Initiative Act.

From University of Wisconsin, July 21, 2020: The Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks has been named a National Science Foundation Quantum Leap Challenge Institute. HQAN’s partnerships include Fermilab. The five-year, $25 million institute helps establishes the Midwest region as a major hub of quantum science.

DOE has awarded a $1.9 million grant to Northern Illinois University and the Illinois Institute of Technology for the training of next-generation workers in accelerator science and technology. The program will cover student tuition costs for two years and fund paid research assistantships at Fermilab and Argonne. Physics professors Michael Syphers and Philippe Piot, both experts in particle accelerator research and technology, are leading the effort at NIU.

After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey will finish taking data on Jan. 9. DES scientists recorded data from more than 300 million distant galaxies. More than 400 scientists from over 25 institutions around the world have been involved in the project, hosted by Fermilab. The collaboration has already produced about 200 academic papers, with more to come.

The upcoming Short-Baseline Near Detector at Fermilab continues scientists’ search for evidence of a hypothetical particle, the sterile neutrino. Collaborators around the world are participating in the detector’s construction. Its first critical components recently arrived from partner institutions. When complete, SBND will be the third and final detector in Fermilab’s Short-Baseline Neutrino Program.

From Daily Herald, Nov. 4, 2018: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers and Chicago-area scientists are working to create a communications network that can withstand hacking.

From Chicago Maroon, Nov. 1, 2018: UChicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will collaborate with Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab in an effort to establish Chicago as a national epicenter of quantum technology research, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced at the Polsky Center this Tuesday.

From Chicago Tribune, Oct. 30, 2018: Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are joining Argonne and Fermilab in creating a network that could ultimately pave the way for communication that can’t be hacked.