Dmitri Denisov re-elected as DZero co-spokesperson

Dmitri Denisov

Dmitri Denisov will lead the DZero collaboration for two more years. He was recently re-elected to another term as the collaboration's co-spokesperson.

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone congratulated Denisov and said he was delighted Denisov would continue in the position.

"There was a very large consensus in the collaboration that Dmitri has been doing an excellent job as a spokesperson," said DZero co-spokesperson Stefan Soldner-Rembold.

"His detailed knowledge of all aspects of the experiment and his vision of what we should do are very important," Soldner-Rembold said.

Denisov has worked on almost all areas of DZero. He began working with the collaboration when he was a graduate student during the experiment's Run I construction. He has served as a spokesperson for the collaboration since 2006.

Denisov said he would like to continue serving in the leadership role to take advantage of both the chance to work with such talented physicists and the bevy of exciting measurements to come.

"I'm excited by the breadth of our physics program," Denisov said. "We have well over 100 different analyses underway."

Soldner-Rembold, a University of Manchester professor, thinks that his close-knit working relationship with Denisov and their appointments exemplify the collaboration's strength - the joined forces of the Fermilab and university research communities.

"You can't get a sheet of paper between us. We work very closely and we exchange opinions daily on what needs to be done," Soldner-Rembold said. "We complement each other very well, and I'm really happy about Dmitri's re-election."

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Unusual visit

AD's Greg Vogel submitted this photo of a group of pelicans stopping by AE Sea on March 30. Although historically pelicans rarely visit the site, this is the second year in a row that they have stopped at Fermilab in early spring. The normal migration route for these birds is west of the laboratory, although they have been spotted at other Kane County locations in the past few years. Vogel saw about 15 of the birds on Tuesday morning, when he took this photo.

Fermilab reacts with excitement after particle collision

From Kane County Chronicle, March 31, 2010

BATAVIA - Fermilab physicist Ian Shipsey is still giddy with excitement after seeing the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday move closer to re-creating the conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang.

From Fermilab's LHC Remote Operations Center, Shipsey and other scientists watched the LHC set record-breaking particle collisions of 7 trillion electron volts.

"It was emotional to see," Shipsey said. "It was a very exciting moment for everyone at Fermilab."

By using accelerators, scientists hope to re-create the conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang. The big-bang theory holds that all the matter and energy in the universe originated from a state of enormous density and temperatures that expanded or exploded in a finite moment.

"We are trying to make primordial soup," Shipsey said.

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Swiss collider puts Fermi physicists to work

From Chicago Public Radio,
March 31, 2010

A massive proton collider in Europe successfully smashed its first protons early Tuesday morning. That means more work for some physicists in Chicago's western suburbs.

When it comes to proton colliders, bigger is better. And now that it's operational, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland is the world's biggest - more than four times bigger than the collider at Fermi Lab in Batavia. And it'll be able to smash protons with seven times the energy.

Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at Fermi. He seems disappointed that Fermi no longer rules the sub-atomic roost, but he says he's excited by the Swiss collider's capabilities.

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