Fermilab pioneer Wes Smart
retires after three decades

Wes Smart

After 36 years of service, Wes Smart is retiring from the Particle Physics Division. May 23, 2007 is his last normal work day, and he officially retires on July 6. Smart has been a laboratory leader since the early days, when he was in charge of the bubble chamber. Over the last few decades, he has served on a number of safety committees and has proved an indispensable collaborator on both the NUMI and MINOS projects.

"It has been a very interesting job with a variety of things to do," said Smart. "I'll miss the people and the job, particularly the technical parts of my work."

Since he was hired in 1971, Smart has served under every director the laboratory has ever had. "I guess you could say that I've been here for 90 percent of the life of the lab," he said.

PPD's Greg Bock recalled Smart's precise handlling of the NuMI beamline. "On NUMI, Wes was the manager of the alignment effort, working with Alignment Group with the responsibility for basically aiming the beam from here to Soudan, Minnesota," Bock said. "He hit the bullseye with that."

Rob Plunkett, the MINOS co-spokesperson, also lauded Smart for his expertise. "Wes's long involvement in determining and understanding the relative positions of the NuMI beam line and the two MINOS detectors made him the guy who knew the answer to this tough question," Plunkett said. "He had to understand positions over 735 km very accurately so we could point the beam correctly -- and this job was quite special and unique. Hitting the detector with the neutrino beam is our first job, and Wes showed us the way home."

Smart will be moving to California to enjoy his retirement in a family home near his daughter, Karen, who lives in Sacramento, and his sister. Smart has two other children: Mathew, who is a playwright in New York City; and Tifanie, who works in aerospace engineering as a mission controller at NASA in Houston.

"Anything from Wes was always very precise and reliable," said NuMI's Jim Hylen. "He sweated the details. I'm sure going to miss him."

The Particle Physics Division is hosting a farewell gathering for his current and former colleagues to wish him well today, beginning at 2 p.m. on WH 15 South. Refreshments will be served.

--Rhianna Wisniewski

NuInt07 confronts complex
interactions with nucleus

NuInt07 poster

When a low-energy neutrino interacts with a heavy nucleus the results are highly complex. An interdisciplinary group of scientists meets at Fermilab from May 30 to June 3, for the Fifth International Workshop on Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the Few-GeV Region (NuInt07) to continue confronting these complications. "The goal of this series is to bring together theorists and experimentalists from the nuclear and high-energy physics communities, to address the many challenges in understanding these complex interactions," said NuInt07 workshop co-chair Jorge Morfin of Fermilab.

NuInt07 opens Wednesday morning, May 30, with sessions on "Using Neutrino Interactions to Search for New Physics," and "Review of New Results in Neutrino Interactions". Other workshop sessions will include current and future neutrino-nucleus scattering experiments; introduction to nuclear effects; and a review of the status of all relevant scattering physics channels. The scientific program put together by the organizing committee is available at the conference website.

Also on the program is the Friday afternoon "wine and cheese" gathering at 4 p.m. for the Fermilab Joint Theoretical-Experimental Seminar. Geralyn Zeller of Columbia University will discuss "Neutrino Cross Section Physics: Past, Present and Future." A poster session follows at the Users' Center, then dinner for workshop participants in the Users' Center.

Registration, available online at the conference website, will close on May 21.

-- Mike Perricone

Reception with the stars:
"Thru a Distant Lens"

When Barbara Cervenka and Sherri Smith are painting and weaving, their thoughts are traveling to outer space. Instead of contemplating traditional portraits and patterns, they think about the birth of stars, light storms exploding billions of years ago and the fantastic geological details of the Moon and our other neighbors in space.

In their exhibit, "Thru a Distant Lens," on display in the Fermilab Art Gallery until June 28, Cervenka and Smith show their interpretation of images taken by telescopes and spacecrafts. A reception on Friday, May 18, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. will give the Fermilab employees and friends an opportunity to meet the artists.

For her paintings, Cervenka uses Hubble Space Telescope photographs such as the Hubble Deep Field images. She combines the expansive wonders of space with the minute miracles of Earth: the opening of flowers, the symmetry of shells and other terrestrial beauties. Smith works with yarn and strips from cotton cloth. Her rugs include images of the moon's surface, created by Apollo Missions before the landing on the moon.

"We both find these images from our space program worth celebrating," Cervenka and Smith proclaim. "We find it interesting to work on them in two of the oldest technologies, painting and weaving."

For more information on the artists and the reception, visit the Art Gallery website.

-- Kurt Riesselmann