Cahill has front-row seat to growth in lab, technology

KC Cahill helped build the Tevatron accelerator magnets similar to these displayed on the 15th floor of Wilson Hall.

When Cutchlow Cahill was a child, he used to accompany his father on electrician jobs, so when Fermilab put out a call for electricians to construct a chain of accelerators, he jumped at the opportunity. That was in 1969.

Cahill, who celebrates 40 years working at Fermilab this week, is the only remaining employee from the Training and Development program that recruited African-Americans from Chicago to work as mechanical and electronic technicians.

He has had a hand in nearly every growth spurt of the laboratory. He originally helped build the beam position detectors, radio frequency amplifiers and RF cavities. Today he works in the cryogenics control room, monitoring the ethane gas, liquid nitrogen and liquid helium levels. Tour the CDF building with Cahill, known as KC, and he’ll show you where he takes inventory of helium and nitrogen bottles, sends out ethane gas to test it for impurities and silences alarms on his computer screen for cryogenic monitoring and operating equipment.

Cahill considers himself fortunate to have contributed to Fermilab’s progress. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve witnessed the goal of gaining beam intensity,” he said. “I get a good feeling when I see pieces of equipment that I helped make.”

Helping is something that comes naturally to KC.

“You can call him at any time in the night. He’s one of those people who has a hard time saying ‘no,’” said PPD technical supervisor Curtis Danner, who has known and worked on and off with Cahill since 1970. Whether it’s fixing friends’ or co-workers’ cars in the middle of the night, or repairing an air pressure regulator at CDF, Cahill has helped many people at Fermilab during his 40-year tenure.

“I know how to do a lot of things,” he said.

In the rare moments when KC took a break from work, he played basketball and was once a member of Fermilab’s now defunct team “the Protons.”

--Kristine Crane

CERN: the view from inside

From physicsworld.com, Jan. 27, 2009

The switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN on 10 September 2008 was watched by an estimated 1bn people. As CERN starts 2009 under new management and facing a major repair job, Matthew Chalmers catches up with the man who took the LHC to the world: CERN's head of communications, James Gillies.

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Rigorous review ahead for Sanford Lab project

From Rapid City Journal, Jan. 25, 2009

The team of scientists planning to build facilities for a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory in Lead is preparing for a 2-1/2-day marathon of meetings with a national review panel starting Wednesday.

The South Dakota Science and Technology Authority operates the lab at the former Homestake gold mine. The state is pumping out water that filled the mine since it closed and expects to open the Sanford Underground Science Laboratory at Homestake on the 4,850-foot-level later this year.

The National Science Foundation in 2007 designated the former mine for its larger deep-lab project, extending to 8,000 feet. NSF has assembled a 25-person committee from a variety of backgrounds to evaluate the progress toward opening the DUSEL.

State science authority executive director Ron Wheeler said the review is a big issue, especially for future funding. Approximately 100 people will be there representing the NSF and the Department of Energy.

"It's become apparent the DUSEL group will need $80 million for its final review in two years," he said.

The review will be held at the Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory next to the University of California-Berkeley campus. Kevin Lesko, a physicist at the university, leads the deep-lab planning team.

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