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Have a safe day!
Tuesday, Sept. 3
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY
SEMINAR THIS WEEK
Wednesday, Sept. 4
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab
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Tuesday, Sept. 3
- Breakfast: All-American breakfast
- Breakfast: bacon, egg and cheese bagel
- Tuna melt
- Smart cuisine: Finger-lickin' baked chicken
- Chicken pot pie
- Honey mustard ham and Swiss panini
- Blackened chicken alfredo
- Chef's choice soup
- Mexican chicken lime soup
- Assorted pizza by the slice
Wilson Hall Cafe menu
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Wednesday, Sept. 3
Lunch
- Berry chicken salad
- Chocolate ricotta cheesecake
Friday, Sept. 6
Dinner
Closed
Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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Nigel Lockyer meets with employees and users
Incoming Director Nigel Lockyer will hold several meetings with Fermilab employees and users this week. These meetings are your chance to ask the new director your questions, share your views and opinions on the current state and the future of the laboratory and hear the new director's thoughts and plans as he steps into his new role.
While the discussion in each session will be guided by the needs of the different groups, employees and users can attend any of the sessions. All meetings will take place in Ramsey Auditorium unless noted otherwise.
Meeting schedule
Today, Sept. 3, 3-4:30 p.m.
Scientists
Wednesday, Sept. 4, 9-10:30 a.m.
Engineers
Wednesday, Sept. 4, 1-2:30 p.m.
Technicians
Thursday, Sept. 5, 9-10:30 a.m.
Computing staff
Thursday, Sept. 5, 1-2:30 p.m.
Operations and administrative staff
Friday, Sept. 6, noon-1:30 p.m.
Users (first meeting), One West
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 3:30-5 p.m.
Users (second meeting)
The two meetings for users will be streamed live.
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Dark Energy Survey begins five-year mission to map southern sky
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This composite snapshot of the Fornax constellation was taken with the Dark Energy Camera in the fall of 2012. You can see each individual field of this snapshot in high resolution with the new DECam interactive feature. For more photos (and a new one each week), visit the Dark Energy Detectives blog. Photo: Dark Energy Survey Collaboration
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Tonight, as the sun sinks below the horizon, the world’s most powerful digital camera will once again turn its gleaming eye skyward. Tonight, and for hundreds of nights over the next five years, a team of physicists and astronomers from around the globe, working from an observatory in Chile, will use this remarkable machine to try to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our universe.
On Aug. 31, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) officially began. Scientists on the survey team will systematically map one-eighth of the sky (5000 square degrees) in unprecedented detail. The start of the survey is the culmination of 10 years of planning, building and testing by scientists from 25 institutions in six countries.
The survey’s goal is to find out why the expansion of the universe is speeding up, instead of slowing down due to gravity, and to probe the mystery of dark energy, the force believed to be causing that acceleration.
“The Dark Energy Survey will explore some of the most important questions about our existence,” said James Siegrist, associate director for High Energy Physics at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “In five years’ time, we will be far closer to the answers and far richer in our knowledge of the universe.”
Read more
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Six scientists receive Intensity Frontier Fellowships
Fermilab, with the support of the Department of Energy, has created an Intensity Frontier Fellowship program for faculty and postdoctoral researchers. The aim of these fellowships is to maintain and strengthen the intellectual hub for Intensity Frontier research at Fermilab by supporting proposals for targeted, peer-reviewed research that is enabled by working onsite and complements, expands or initiates laboratory efforts. The response to the new fellowship program has been very strong: 33 proposals were submitted.
This summer, a peer-review committee comprising three Fermilab and four external scientists recommended to the Directorate awards for the first group of these Fellowships. The awards were given for either six months or one year.
The awardees for fall of 2013 are:
- Flavio Cavanna—Yale Univerisity and University of L’Aquila, Italy
- Edward Kearns—Boston University
- Breese Quinn—University of Mississippi
- Alexander Sousa—University of Cincinnati
- Thomas Strauss—University of Bern, Switzerland
- Patricia Vahle—College of William and Mary
New fellowships will be awarded in 2014. More information about the fellowship program is available online.
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In memoriam: Wilma Cardona
Fermilab employee Wilma Cardona passed away on Aug. 30. A memorial service for Cardona will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 4, from 5 to 8 p.m. at The Healy Chapel, 332 W. Downer Place, in Aurora.
She will be lying in state on Thursday, Sept. 5, from 10 a.m. until the mass time of 10:30 a.m. at St. Joseph Church, High St. and Illinois Ave., in Aurora.
For further information please call 630-897-9291 or visit www.healychapel.com to leave an online condolence.
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After the LHC, the deluge
From Science, Aug. 29, 2013
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA—When he applied for his job, says Peter Onyisi, a 31-year-old experimental particle physicist, he didn't let his hopes get too high. "I tried to remember that if I didn't get an academic job it wasn't the end of the world," Onyisi says. "One has to be careful not to let one's identity get too wrapped up in being a physicist." Fortunately for Onyisi, in the end he didn't have to face an identity crisis. Last year, he was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Texas (UT), Austin, a plum position at any time, but especially now, in perhaps the tightest job market in particle physics in decades.
Read more |
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Beginnings
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Fermilab Director
Nigel Lockyer
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It is a privilege to be here on my first day as director of this great laboratory. My philosophy as I start my tenure is to develop and build on the platform of opportunities that you have constructed. This laboratory boasts tremendous talent, and there is a very rich menu of possibilities for us to apply our strengths to solve big scientific questions.
Over the summer I have spoken to many different people and have heard overwhelming enthusiasm for the future of Fermilab and for the future of particle physics. There are great questions to be answered and new accelerator, detector and data analysis techniques needed to address them. The physics community will be debating the priorities of these questions and initiatives as part of the P5 process, and I am anxious to hear your views.
I thank those of you who have already reached out to share your opinions and to offer words of support. I look forward to talking to many more of you in this week's series of meetings. And I hope the conversation won't stop there. Don't hesitate to send me an e-mail, give me a call or stop by to see me in my office or in the cafeteria to share your thoughts.
Many have asked about my vision for Fermilab. Initially I will focus on anchoring the laboratory with a diverse experimental program that leads the world in its ability to answer at least one of the major particle physics questions. We must make the best use of our world-class accelerator complex while continuing to contribute critical expertise to global projects. And we must always be on the lookout for new opportunities, whether revealed by discoveries from the LHC's next run or from the worldwide searches for dark-matter particles.
Accelerator stewardship—working to develop accelerator breakthroughs for science and, with our partners, translate them into applications for society—will be another early priority. Partnerships will be essential: with our international colleagues; with DOE and our sister national labs; with universities; and with industry. Excellence in management and operations will be critical to success in all areas.
I wish to send special thanks to Pier Oddone and Young-Kee Kim for working hard for many years to set the stage for the lab's next era and to Jack Anderson for running the laboratory so ably since July.
I look forward to working with the FRA and Fermilab team—employees, users, our colleagues around the world, DOE, the University of Chicago and URA—to guide Fermilab on the road to discovery.
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Retaining walls for MC-1 Building
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Workers have finished pouring the MC-1 Building basement walls and have started constructing the retaining walls, which will extend 18 feet above the ground. Photo: Cindy Arnold
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With the MC-1 Building basement installed, workers from Whittaker Construction and Excavating Inc. are now pouring the 2-foot-thick above-ground walls that will act as earth-retaining walls for the future Muon Campus beamline enclosure berms. Concrete foundations and walls are scheduled to be complete by October, followed by the erection of structural steel columns, beams and trusses.
In January, engineers and technicians from the Accelerator Division's Cryogenic Department will be the first occupants of the building and will install equipment in support of the Muon g-2 and Mu2e experiments. In February, engineers and technicians from the Muon g-2 experiment will ready the basement for the installation of the Muon g-2 storage ring, which arrived at Fermilab in July and is currently stored near the Meson Detector Building. The MC-1 Building will be completed in April.
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Why Particle Physics Matters
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In this 2-minute compilation video, scientists from 13 institutions explain why particle physics matters. Today is the last day for you to vote for your favorite of the top five individual videos. Video: Symmetry magazine |
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Sign me up
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Matthew Alvarez of the Accelerator Division won the Registering for GreenRide raffle and received a $100 gas card. He lives in Oak Park and is using GreenRide to look for potential carpoolers and log his commuting savings, which includes taking the train. He looks forward to more people signing up for GreenRide. Photo: Katie Kosirog, ESH&Q |
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Sunny
