Mike Cooke receives 2010 Director's Volunteer Award

Mike Cooke receives the Director's Award from Pier Oddone and a hug from his toddler son.

At an award ceremony on Nov. 2, Director Pier Oddone presented DZero physicist Mike Cooke with the annual Director’s Award, recognizing Cooke's volunteer service.

The award is given annually to an employee, user, graduate student, retiree or guest scientist who contributed significantly to Fermilab's K-12 education programs.
Marge Bardeen, head of Fermilab Education Office, said that Fermilab had a fabulous year of volunteer outreach activities, reaching more than 37,000 kids and 4,300 teachers.

“These volunteers are our ambassadors to the community,” Oddone said. “Fermilab might not find out for 30 years what you’ve done, until some kid grows up and becomes our funder or director.”

Cooke has visited classrooms and performed physics demonstrations since 2005 when he was a graduate student at Fermilab. Along with nominee Dave Schmitz, Cooke developed a show called “FUNdamentals of Physics” to demonstrate how Newton’s laws apply to children’s everyday lives. They have performed it at Fermilab’s open houses and Daughters and Sons to Work Day.

Over the years, Cooke has also frequently volunteered for various events including Science Chicago’s LabFest at Millennium Park and field trips to Fermilab. He also enhanced  and restructured Fermilab’s popular classroom presentation, 'Charge! Electricity and Magnetism.' In the award nomination, the selection committee lauded Cooke for “generosity with his time enhancing the laboratory’s reputation in both education and science research.”

 “It’s fun to share the enthusiasm we have here at the lab with kids,” Cooke said. “They have a lot of good questions about science. Often the kids drag their parents around, but the parents are the ones who end up cornering me with questions.”

Cooke said his own love of science started early on, watching NOVA and other science TV programs.

“I think I would have loved it if a scientist had visited me in grade school,” he said.
Nine other nominees received recognition certificates at the ceremony: David Harding, Todd Johnson, Don Lincoln, Thomas Peterson, Erik Ramberg, James Santucci, Dave Schmitz, Chris Stoughton and Herman White.

The annual award is made possible by an anonymous donor to Fermilab Friends for Science Education, a not-for-profit organization supporting science education programs at Fermilab.

-Sara Reardon

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Fermilab aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions Photo credit: matteo NATALE / iStock

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White House honors young scientists

From Daily Herald, Nov. 5, 2010

Editor's note: See tomorrow's Fermilab Today for more on Juan Estrada.

Three young scientists from suburban government science labs have been awarded the highest honor in their fields given by the federal government to researchers still in the early phases of their careers.

Dillon Fong and Elena Shevchenko, who both work at Argonne Laboratory in Lemont, joined Juan Estrada, a physicist at Batavia’s Fermi Laboratory, and 82 other scientists and engineers around the country in winning the award from nine different participating agencies ranging from the Department of Defense to Agriculture to Energy.

They were all nominated by the labs at which they work and recognized for their innovative research as well as their commitment to community service.

“These presidential awards recognize that one of the responsibilities indeed, one of the defining features of great scientists and engineers is that they put their knowledge and experience to work for others,” said Rick Weiss, director of strategic communications at the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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