STEM career expo at Fermilab attracts hundreds of students

Local high school students speak to a career professional at the April 8 STEM Career Expo, held at Fermilab.

Hundreds of students from Kane and DuPage counties flocked to Fermilab on April 8 for the third annual Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Career Expo.

Organized by the Fermilab Education Office and career specialists from Kane and DuPage county schools, the event offered students a chance to learn about potential directions for their future. The third annual event attracted between 600 and 700 high school students, up from 500 last year.

"We find it encouraging that we see more students wanting to come to this opportunity," said Fermilab Education Office's Susan Dahl, who helped to organize the event. "Some came with ideas of a few different careers. This helped them take some of those ideas off and put many more on."

The event helped broaden the possible career options for Tim Nickels, a senior at St. Charles North High School.

Bartlett High School academy sophomores Purva Khare, Charisma Dalvi and Marianne Palczewski, attended the expo to explore future career options. The school has a job-shadowing requirement for the students their junior year and the girls were considering shadowing scientists. The girls spoke with a handful of scientists and professionals, including Fermilab physicist Doug Glenzinski.

They were among a few dozen students Glenzinski spoke with that night. He volunteered to help with the event this year as a way to reach out to the next generation of scientists.

Susan Gloss, a career specialist for the St. Charles High School District, helped to organize the event. "It was successful right from the start," she said. Gloss said that financial constraints almost prevented the event from taking place this year, but she is really glad it did.

"It is fabulous that Fermilab is able to host an event like this in a collaborative environment. In these economic times, schools aren't always able to support exploration like this," Dahl said.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Volunteer for National Lab Day with Fermilab

Fermilab will celebrate National Lab Day May 3-7.

National Lab Day is a nationwide movement to support science, technology, engineering and math education in our schools by connecting teachers with working professionals. This connection will bring more hands-on, inquiry-based laboratory experiences to students. This year's celebration of National Lab Day will take place for many schools during the first week of May.

Join Fermilab in supporting National Lab Day by volunteering for opportunities in our community.

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Now accepting 2010 Alvin Tollestrup Award nominations

At each year's Users' meeting, Fermilab pioneer Alvin Tollestrup presents an outstanding postdoc with his namesake award. Nominations for that award will be accepted until Tuesday, April 20.

All Ph.D. researchers in non-tenure-track or equivalent positions at Fermilab or Universities Research Association-member institutions, or institutions collaborating in Fermilab projects are eligible. Postdocs must be within six years of the receipt of their Ph.D. Qualified work must be in conjunction with a Fermilab experiment or accelerator project or under the auspices of the Fermilab Theory or Astrophysics Groups.

Candidates may nominate themselves for the award. Applications must include: a CV, list of publications and invited talks, a written statement (of no more than five pages) from the candidate describing the research, and no more than two letters of support from scientists familiar with the work.

Award winners receive a certificate of recognition and a check for $3,500 from URA. Nomination materials should be e-mailed as pdf or plain text documents to usersoffice@fnal.gov by April 20.

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At Issue talks with Fermilab and Argonne directors

From WBBM Newsradio 780, April 11, 2010

The directors of Fermilab and Argonne discuss particle and energy research on WBBM's At Issue.

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Giant natural particle accelerator discovered above thunderclouds

From Physorg.com, April 14, 2010

A lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 km above the surface of the Earth.

Dr Martin Füllekrug from the University's Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering presented his new work on Wednesday 14 April at the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting (RAS NAM 2010) in Glasgow.

His findings show that when particularly intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator above the thunderclouds.

The cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and these electrons are accelerated upwards by the electric field of the lightning discharge. The free electrons and the lightning electric field then make up a natural particle accelerator.

The accelerated electrons then develop into a narrow particle beam which can propagate from the lowest level of the atmosphere (the troposphere), through the middle atmosphere and into near-Earth space, where the energetic electrons are trapped in the Earth's radiation belt and can eventually cause problems for orbiting satellites.

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