Bob Willford retires today

Bob Willford

For Bob Willford, success has always meant the aha! moment. "I love to see the light bulbs go on," Willford said. "When people are confused and you help them understand something, you can almost see light bulbs turn on over their heads."

Willford, the training manager for Management Information Systems and the manager for the former MIS Help Desk, which recently merged with the Fermilab Service Desk, has helped people achieve those aha! moments for more than a decade. Willford will officially retire from Fermilab in the third week of February. Today is his last day.

Willford began working as an assistant budget officer in the Research Division, now PPD, in 1992. Although he had a penchant for science and math and enjoyed crunching numbers, Willford jumped at the training manager opportunity when it arose.

"I had taught science and math for 15 years," Willford said. "This was an opportunity to return to my first love: teaching."

During the past 10 years, Willford has helped employees learn and troubleshoot the complex business applications needed to do their jobs.Each time there was a new application or an update, Willford almost single-handedly trained employees how to use it, wrote documentation for that application and reviewed the implementation process.

Prior to the recent MIS Help Desk - FNAL Service Desk merger, Willford oversaw the training portion of the rollout of the Fermi Time and Labor electronic time card reporting system to half of the laboratory.

Willford is proud of that and other efforts. But the memories he will recall the most are of his coworkers: their pleasantness and their senses of humor.

"Every time I left my office, a coworker would set my clock back an hour, so I retaliated by locking him out of his office," Willford said. No one ever got hurt during these pranks, but they did keep the atmosphere light.

"Bob brings a lot of fun to the job," said CD's Richard Karuhn, who was Willford's supervisor from 1999 to 2009. "He is someone that people genuinely enjoy being around. His laughter and friendship will certainly be missed."

-- Rhianna Wisniewski with additional reporting by Tonisha Taylor

Reminder: Limited dialing tonight

AT&T maintenance activity overnight between 1 and 2 a.m. on Jan. 14, will likely restrict dialing to and from Fermilab phone numbers for up to 30 minutes. During this brief window of time, you may continue placing calls from a four-digit laboratory extension to another, including the laboratory's emergency number, x3131. However, calls to or from any non-laboratory numbers, including cell phones, will not be connected. Full dialing capabilities will be restored as soon as the maintenance is complete, around 2 a.m.

People in physics: Joe Incandela, new deputy spokesperson for CMS

Joe Incandela of the University of California, Santa Barbara has begun his term as one of two deputy spokespeople for CMS. Incandela and his fellow deputy spokesperson Albert De Roeck of CERN were appointed in July 2009 by new CMS spokesperson, Guido Tonelli.

Tonelli appointed De Roeck and Incandela, exotica group convener and deputy physics coordinator respectively, to their two year posts in a break with recent tradition. In the past, one deputy has been involved with activities closer to the hardware of the detector and the other with activities that are closer to physics. Tonelli appointed two deputies from physics in recognition of the major transition underway from commissioning hardware to data-taking and first physics with LHC collisions.

"To be deputy spokespersons at this time is a great privilege because we are in front row seats at a historical event. I'm very honored to be in this position," explains Incandela.

In addition to diplomatic and administrative duties like guiding visitors and coordinating with funding agencies, De Roeck and Incandela need to follow the progress of many areas of the CMS experiment with emphasis on the chain of events from data-taking to final results. The two have divided up various aspects of the CMS program in order to follow things in greater detail but they plan to stay in close contact so that both are always on top of the main issues.

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-- Daisy Yuhas