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Thursday, June 20, 2013 |
Nigel Lockyer appointed director of Fermilab
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Physicist Nigel Lockyer, head of TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, will take a new role in September: director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Lockyer will be a familiar face to many at Fermilab. He spent 22 years as a researcher on the Collider Detector at Fermilab, or CDF, experiment at the Tevatron particle collider, starting in 1984. He was co-spokesperson of the 600-member experiment from 2002 to 2004.
Lockyer said he looks forward to reconnecting with former colleagues, to forging closer ties between laboratories in the United States and Canada, and to directing the only U.S. national laboratory solely dedicated to particle physics research.
"The opportunity to lead one of the world's most prestigious particle physics laboratories was too good to pass up," Lockyer said. "The future of the field looks to be very exciting; it's a great time to be a particle physicist."
The Board of Directors of the Fermi Research Alliance, which operates Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy, offered Lockyer the job at the conclusion of a nine-month, international search by a 15-member appointed committee. He will succeed Fermilab Director Pier Oddone, who announced in 2012 that he would retire this year after eight years as director.
"I'm happy to see Nigel will take the helm at Fermilab," Oddone said. "He is quite familiar with the laboratory and will keep Fermilab at the forefront of particle physics research. He has shown immense competence in his job at TRIUMF, stepping out of his comfort zone as a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania to lead and transform Canada's particle and nuclear physics laboratory."
The progress TRIUMF has made under Lockyer's leadership bodes well for the future of the Fermilab program. Since he became director in 2007, TRIUMF has expanded its operations by 25 percent and has established Canada's first accelerator-science cooperative agreements with Japan, India, China and Korea.
Press Release: Nigel Lockyer of Canada's TRIUMF lab named Fermilab director
Nigel Lockyer, director of Canada's TRIUMF laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia, has been selected to become the next director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. A suite of new projects awaits Lockyer at Fermilab, which is America's premier laboratory for particle physics research.
University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer made the announcement today in his capacity as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. The appointment was approved by the University of Chicago and Universities Research Association, Inc., partners in Fermi Research Alliance, which operates the laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. The appointment concludes a nine-month international search conducted by a 15-member committee led by retired Lockheed Martin CEO and member of the URA Board of Trustees Norman Augustine.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz expressed his strong support for Lockyer's candidacy after meeting with him early this week in Washington, D.C.
"Nigel Lockyer will be a terrific leader to guide the Fermilab in this era," said Secretary Moniz. "He brings to the laboratory a truly impressive record of excellence as both a scientist and an administrator. His significant contributions to high energy physics are widely recognized, and he has also made his mark in other fields, including nuclear medicine. We expect Fermilab to benefit greatly from the depth and breadth of his scientific vision and his long, successful experience leading and managing scientific institutions and collaborations. I very much look forward to working with Nigel."
In 2008, TRIUMF established the nonprofit organization Advanced Applied Physics Solutions, dedicated to commercializing innovations from the physical sciences across Canada. In 2009, TRIUMF began operation of TIGRESS, a state-of-the-art gamma-ray spectrometer with which scientists conduct detailed studies of nuclear decays.
In 2011, TRIUMF started construction of the Advanced Rare IsotopE Laboratory, or ARIEL, the laboratory's flagship facility to expand Canada's capabilities to produce and study isotopes for medicine using next-generation superconducting radio-frequency technology.
This year, TRIUMF received support from the Canadian government to pursue new technology for producing Tc-99m, a medical isotope used to image diseases in about 40 million medical procedures annually. The laboratory developed new cyclotron-based technology that frees medical centers from their current dependence on nuclear reactors to produce the isotopes.
Lockyer boasts impressive scientific credentials as well. In 2006 he won the American Physical Society's W.K.H. Panofsky Prize for measuring the lifetime of one of the smallest building blocks of the universe, the bottom quark.
Lockyer was born in Scotland and raised in Canada. He earned his undergraduate degree from York University in Toronto in 1975 and his PhD from The Ohio State University in 1980. After that, he spent four years at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory as a postdoc working with Nobel Laureate Burton Richter, who directed SLAC from 1984 to 1999.
In 1984, Lockyer was hired as a professor of particle physics at the University of Pennsylvania and began work on the CDF experiment. In Pennsylvania, he partnered with the Penn Medical School to work on applications of particle physics in cancer treatment. Lockyer became director of TRIUMF in May 2007 and has worked as a professor at the University of British Columbia during his tenure.
Even before Lockyer gets started at Fermilab, he will have the chance to help shape the future of U.S. particle physics. He will take part in the field's long-term planning process, a major component of which will take place in Minneapolis in August. But he's most looking forward to moving the science ahead, he said.
"I would like to help articulate the vision for the U.S. particle physics community, get everyone on board and get started," he said.
—Kathryn Jepsen
A version of this article appeared in symmetry.
