people

Working on hardware doesn’t come easily to all physicists, but Francesca Ricci-Tam has learned that what matters most is a willingness to put in the practice.

Żurek shares her experiences at the 2019 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting —from a blimp flight with Ada E. Yonath, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009, to a panel discussion she participated in with three Nobel laureates about navigating a career path in science.

Ketevan Akhobadze moved to Fermilab from the country of Georgia and found a new home. She now creates exhibits as a tool to introduce the public to the exciting science done at Fermilab.

Karen Uhlenbeck’s pioneering work marries math with physics. Her work in the field of mathematical physics has earned her numerous honors and awards, including the 1988 Noether Lecture award, the National Medal of Science in 2001, and the 2007 Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Mathematical Research from the American Mathematical Society. A MacArthur fellow, she is also the first woman to win the Abel Prize in its 17-year history.

Machado’s $2.5 million award will fund theoretical physics research to get the most out of Fermilab’s exploration of neutrino science. He plans to collaborate with scientists at Fermilab and other institutions to develop ideas that will guide experimentalists in addressing one of nature’s most mysterious particles.

Karen Kosky gets to see many different aspects of Fermilab. She is the head of the Facilities Engineering Services Section, which manages everything from buildings and high-voltage electric systems to prairie burns and our herd of bison. She and her team work hard to maintain the site and keep Fermilab’s conventional facilities and property operations running smoothly.

From SDPB Radio’s “In the Moment: Innovation,” July 26, 2019: In this 18-minute radio piece, Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer discusses experimental particle physics, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment and the partnership with the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota.

Giaccone’s research focuses on particle accelerator cavities — the structures that transfer energy to particle beams as the beams race through them. She and her team use plasma to process the inner surface of the cavities in order to remove contaminations. This new technique results in a better-performing accelerator. Her work was recently recognized at the International Conference on RF Superconductivity.

Chang Kee Jung almost lost his way as a risk-taking student, but after a university took a chance on him, he grew into a leader in physics.

As she grew up in the small town of San Pellegrino in the Italian Alps, three things conspired to make Maria Elena Monzani a physicist: a fascination for outer space, a Nobel Prize and a nuclear disaster. Now she prepares an international team to search for clues to one of the biggest scientific mysteries.