In Memoriam: Dennis Theriot

Dennis Theriot, center, works with Bruce Chrisman and former deputy director Ken Stanfield on designing the One West conference room in 1993.

Dennis Theriot, a laboratory leader during the '80s and early '90s, died on July 5. He was 72.

Theriot retired from Fermilab in 1993 as associate director of technology. During his 24 years at the laboratory, he also served as head of the neutrino department and as the deputy project manager for CDF, which he was instrumental in designing and building.

Former Fermilab deputy director Ken Stanfield, who worked with Theriot during most of his career, remembers how Theriot brought his talent for managing very large enterprises to each assignment.

Theriot had oversight of conventional construction when John Peoples was laboratory director. Peoples credits Theriot's vision for the design of One West and the ground floor entrances to Wilson Hall, and the conversion of experimental facilities into an engineering center and the Silicon Detector Facility (SiDet).

"I fondly remember many heated and productive discussions on how to build the laboratory," Peoples said. "Dennis brought a passion and good humor to his work that few others had. He was one of the people who helped to build the Fermilab we love."

Theriot provided structure to both CDF's detector and to CDF's diverse and complicated international collaboration, said former Fermilab employee Roy Schwitters, who worked with Theriot on CDF and the Superconducting Super Collider.

"He well understood the physics we wanted to do with CDF, including assembling multi-hundred-ton objects into a precision instrument, and the foibles of physicists in trying to do so," Schwitters said.

Fermilab Chief Operating Officer Bruce Chrisman, who worked alongside Theriot as the associate director for administration, remembers Theriot as enthusiastic.

"Dennis was a great guy. He always brought well thought-out ideas to the table," Chrisman said.

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--Rhianna Wisniewski

Dark Energy Survey announces new website

Astronomy was once the domain of the lone stargazer peering at the night sky. But modern experiments, such as the Dark Energy Survey, require more complex arrangements.

Learn more about DES through its new website. Hundreds of scientists taking part in the multinational collaboration will use a high-tech camera attached to a high-power telescope to study the stars. The new website explains the instruments and methods DES scientists will use in their research and the science behind the question they hope to answer: What is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate?

U of M students building small-scale neutrino detector

From Minnesota Public Radio,
July 13, 2010

Minneapolis - Solving the unexplained mysteries of the universe may seem like a big goal for a research project, but that's exactly what scientists hope someday comes out of a work University of Minnesota students are doing this summer.

The students are building parts for a neutrino detector in a huge warehouse near the university's Twin Cities campus.

The detector is a smaller version of a six-story-high device that will be placed in an underground lab in northern Minnesota in few years.

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