AD head Roger Dixon honored with APS Fellowship

AD head Roger Dixon was elected an APS Fellow in late November.

Roger Dixon has long been a leader at Fermilab. Now he has been named a leader in his field.

Late last month, Dixon was elected an American Physical Society Fellow in the Division of Particles & Fields, an honor only bestowed annually to one-half of 1 percent of the APS total membership. Dixon was elected to the honor for his leadership of the Tevatron II Run luminosity upgrade program and his leadership in the construction and initial operation of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search.

"This really makes it clear to me that I've been extremely fortunate from graduate school on to work with such exceptional people," Dixon said. "On CDMS and Run II, the people I've worked with were incredibly talented and extremely dedicated."

Two groups of those people feel the same way about him. Dixon's efforts to boost the success of the Tevatron have helped to increase the success of both the CDF and DZero detectors.

"I am very pleased to see such a thoughtful physicist recognized with this honor. Roger's leadership of the Accelerator Division has had a tremendous positive impact on the CDF experiment," said CDF co-spokesperson Rob Roser.

Dixon assumed leadership of the Accelerator Division in 2003. Under his leadership, the Tevatron improved from averaging three inverse picobarns of integrated luminosity per week to 35.

"Roger went through many challenging and exciting projects, leading divisions and experiments and the outcome was always scientific success," said DZero co-spokesman Dmitri Denisov. "In early 2000's the Tevatron complex and the laboratory were struggling with getting Tevatron luminosity up to design goals. It was Roger who stepped up to lead the Accelerator Division and push the Tevatron to remarkable performance."

--Rhianna Wisniewski

Four Fermilab experiments among top 10 physics stories

Editor's Note:Four of Fermilab's experiments were featured in three of the AIP Bulletin of Physics News' top ten physics stories for 2007. Included are: MiniBooNE's solved neutrino mystery, the Tevatron's hunt for the Higgs and other observed events; and the conclusion by Auger Observatory that the highest energy cosmic rays come from active galactic nuclei.

Laboratory Releases Physics Advisory Committee Report

The Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee (PAC) met at Fermilab from November 1-3 to review aspects of the Fermilab science program. The focus of this fall's meeting included Project X and its physics, computational cosmology, neutrino physics program submissions, US CMS Upgrade plans, muon to electron conversion, and the Tevatron Collider program.

The charge to the Committee and its comments and recommendations are now available via links from the PAC webpage.

The PAC is a major source of advice to Director Pier Oddone about the future direction of Fermilab's experiments and programs. Ever since Fermilab's early days, the PAC's recommendations and comments have offered insight into opportunities and issues important to members of the Laboratory community.

The PAC is composed of senior scientists from universities and high-energy physics laboratories in the U.S. and abroad. "The theorists and experimentalists on the Committee offer both breadth of vision and depth of experience," said Appel. "The combined wisdom of the members is greater than the sum of its parts, coming as it does from detailed presentations and discussions by a diverse group of researchers."