Fermilab Today

Everyone is invited to attend an all-hands celebration on July 28 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. The event begins with nontechnical presentations on recent lab milestones in Ramsey Auditorium, followed by an ice cream reception sponsored by the Employee Advisory Group in the atrium and south patio.

Chief Research Officer Joe Lykken will hold an all-Office-of-the-CRO meeting on July 22 from 10 to 11 a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium. If you work in one of the following departments, please plan to attend: Center for Particle Astrophysics, CMS Center, Neutrino Division, Particle Physics Division.

Chief Operating Officer Tim Meyer will hold an all-Office-of-the-COO meeting on July 29 from 10 to 11 a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium. Please plan to attend if you are a staff member in the Facilities Engineering Services Section, Workforce Development and Resources Section, Office of the General Counsel, Office of Communication, Office of Campus Strategy and Readiness, Office of Integrated Planning and Performance Management, Office of Partnerships and Technology Transfer, or Illinois Accelerator Research Center.

In Brief

Women's Initiative presents lunchtime discussion of book Mindset - July 30

The Fermilab Women's Initiative invites everyone to a lunchtime discussion of the book Mindset by Carol S. Dweck on Thursday, July 30, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in WH7XO, the Racetrack.

In Mindset, Dweck explains that it's not just our abilities and talent that bring us success, but also whether we approach our goals with a fixed or growth mindset.

AD's Lucy Nobrega will facilitate the event. Copies of the book are available from the Fermilab library. The discussion is in three weeks, so consider starting the book soon.

In Brief

Meghan Moe Beitiks' 'Intra-Active Hitmap' on 15th floor

Artist Meghan Moe Beitiks stands in front of "Intra-Active Hitmap," now on display on the 15th floor of Wilson Hall. Photo: Georgia Schwender, OC

Meghan Moe Beitiks, the artist behind the recent Water Street Studio exhibit "Observations of Final States in Interactions," has made one of her pieces available to anyone who comes on the Fermilab site. Pictured above, "Intra-Active Hitmap" is now on display in the movie theater in the northeast corner of Wilson Hall's 15th floor. The work will be up until next year.

After interviewing four Fermilab experimental physicists and filming them at work at their desks, Beitiks infused a neutrino hitmap showing particle tracks recorded by the MINERvA detector with imagery of physicists and their work environments. Based on Karen Barad's concept of "intra-action"— in which all mutually entangled matter is defined through relationships — "Intra-Active Hitmap" depicts the interactions of the artist and the physicists with their particle detectors and workspaces.

In the News

Inside U of C's startup factory

From Crain's Chicago Business, June 30, 2015

The 3-D printers and laser-cutting machine have been installed, and entrepreneurs arrive this week to a newly renovated co-working space inside a century-old building in Hyde Park.

The "fab lab" for fabricating prototypes is part of the second phase of the Chicago Innovation Exchange, an ambitious project launched last fall by the University of Chicago to spur innovation from students, professors on its campus and others living in the neighborhood.

Among the tenants will be researchers from Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont and Fermilab near Batavia, who will have space at the CIE. It marks the first time that the two national labs, which are managed by the U of C, will have a permanent presence on campus.

FIFE workshop brings computing experts and experimentalists together

From left: Herb Greenlee (ND), Mike Kirby (SCD) and Rob Kutschke (SCD) participated in this year's FIFE workshop. Photo: Hanah Chang, OCIO

June 1 and 2 marked the third year of the annual FIFE workshop. The workshop serves as a single point of contact between the experiments and a broad array of computing services for running their applications, provided by Computing.

This year, Computing hosted participants from more than 10 different experiments, including talks from MicroBooNE, NOvA, DUNE, Mu2e, LArIAT, MINOS, SeaQuest, DarkSide and MINERvA ,as well as from members of the Scientific Computing Division who work on the software and services. Additionally, Open Science Grid (OSG) project staff and computer scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison HTCondor Project participated.

The workshop provided a forum for experimenters and experts to work together, consult and get feedback and introduce changes.

"The workshop gave the experimenters an opportunity to communicate our experience and requests directly," said Fermilab scientist Herb Greenlee, who works on MicroBooNE. "We could effectively communicate to Computing some of the things that we want."

One example of this was a coordination session between FIFE, OSG and the Dark Energy Survey and the latter's new campaign to conduct data analysis based on upcoming possible gravitational wave signals from the LIGO experiment. This was a new use case for both the FIFE group and OSG, said Mike Kirby of the FIFE team. Once the data is available, time will be of the essence, he said, so that the Dark Energy Survey can point other observatories at the signal source.

The workshop also served as a great learning opportunity.

"I learned about a few tools and applications that I didn't know existed and that we're going to adopt," said Rob Kutschke of Mu2e. "The workshop was beneficial in alerting the experimenters to what's coming down the pipeline. It gives us a chance to prepare for it, influence the priorities of the FIFE team and say 'Look, I really want to be at the table when you're making final decisions about this part of the job.'"

Satish Desai of NOvA agrees.

"It was a great opportunity to learn about the infrastructure that we're using and give feedback to the maintainers of FIFE," he said.

There's always something to be gained when experts from diverse fields meet face to face. With FIFE, OSG and HTCondor experts in the same room, this year's workshop was a success. Participants look forward to a fourth in the FIFE series in June 2016.

—Hanah Chang

Photo of the Day

Undulatus asperatus

Undulating clouds form over the Feynman Computing Center. Photo: Leticia Shaddix, PPD

In the News

Can you help this boy genius accomplish his dream?

From NBC Connecticut News, July 3, 2015

Editor's note: This item features one of three finalists in the Rock the LHC video contest. Voting ends July 19.

A Danielson boy needs your help to make his dream come true: to visit the Fermilab in Chicago.

Russell Farnsworth is your average 13-year-old boy with lots of hobbies, including playing the saxophone, solving a Rubik's cube, looking through his telescope and reading.

What the eighth grader is really interested in is the universe — and all the matter that makes it up.

His dream is to visit the Fermilab in Chicago, home of the nation's premier particle physics laboratory.

Watch the news segment