Summer program "targets" budding scientists

TARGET program students and staff pose for a photos after their final presentations in July.

Can six weeks at Fermilab inspire a lifetime in science? The participants in the laboratory's TARGET: Science and Engineering Program may be proof positive.

For 30 years, the summer internship program has given local high school students from underrepresented minority groups the chance to explore the life of a scientist from the inside. Today, TARGET alumni are scientists and engineers themselves.

"From what we've seen, the program has been very successful," said Sandra Charles of Fermilab's Equal Opportunity and Diversity Office. "One of our alumni is currently attending MIT, and another is on the physics faculty of Florida A&M University."

On Friday, this year's 14 TARGET students wrap up their busy summer at Fermilab. They spent mornings paired with personnel throughout the laboratory, working in sites spread from the Technical Division to the Office of Communication. In the afternoons, they gathered at the Quad County Urban League to collaborate on their own science projects, including a wind-powered electric generator and hot air balloons. During one week, the students heard career advice from a Ph.D. biochemist and an aerospace engineer. Now they are eager to imagine their own futures in science.

"I will definitely apply what I learned here to school and to my career," said Camilla Brewer, a rising senior who hopes to become a doctor. "I learned how to apply physics. I knew how to go from a word problem to math, but I'd never connected physics to the real world."

Matt Bajzek, also a rising senior, said his experience testing magnets in the Technical Division solidified his interest in engineering.

"It's interesting just being in close proximity to so much different technology," he said.

Rising college freshman D'Angelo Cox, who worked on grid computing support in the Computing Division, said the future might lead him right back to Fermilab.

"I want to do physics," he said. "This program has given me a glimpse of what doing research will be like."

-- Rachel Carr

In Memoriam: Cyndi Rathbun

Information Resources Department staff members in 2003, including Cyndi Rathbun, fourth from left.

Former employee Cyndi Rathbun, 58, died Aug. 18, 2009, after a battle with cancer.

Rathbun met her husband, Tom, at the laboratory in the early 1970s. After she and Tom married, Rathbun left the laboratory to raise their children. She returned to the laboratory in 1984 and worked until 2005.

During her more than two decades working at the laboratory, Rathbun worked as a clerk in purchasing and later as technical information coordinator processing technical publications.

"Cyndi was a conscientious worker with an enthusiastic personality. She had an infectious smile and laugh and will be greatly missed by everyone who was fortunate enough to have known her," said Jackie Coleman, a friend and coworker.

A full obituary is available here.

Sen. Al Franken goes deep to learn about particle physics

Photo courtesy of Jerry Meier, assistant laboratory manager from the University of Minnesota.

Sen. Al Franken showed a serious interest in particle physics when he toured the Soudan Mine 2500-feet underground in Minnesota last week.

The former comedy writer and talk show host was full of earnest questions about the physics behind the mine's current operating experiments: a dark matter detector called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, or CDMS II; and a high-energy neutrino detector called the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, or MINOS. Still, occasionally, his humorous side revealed itself such as when he stopped the initial jargon-laden explanations from physicists with a helpful hint that they just "pretend he's not a physicist".

After Franken got a tour of the mine and its experiments, physicists and staff from the University of Minnesota and Fermilab outlined the research planned for NOvA, or NuMI Off-Axis Neutrino Appearance Experiment, the nearby neutrino project that will use the same particle beam as MINOS. They also explained how the project is boosting the northern Minnesota economy. NOvA has been infused with more than $40 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money. The stimulus funding allowed for the May groundbreaking of the NOvA far detector site in Ash River, Minn., which will create more than 125 construction-related jobs.

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