$225,000 awarded for joint U of C - Fermilab Initiatives

Donald Levy, vice president for Research and for National Laboratories announced Wednesday that researchers and scientists at the University of Chicago and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory were awarded a total of $225,000 for new joint research projects through the university's new Strategic Collaborative Initiatives (SCI) program for Fermilab. The research projects cover a broad range of studies from chemistry to high energy particle physics to computational cosmology. Proposals for collaborative projects that included researchers from Argonne National Laboratory were also considered and one was selected for funding.

New proposals receiving SCI grants and their principal investigators are:

• "Fundamental studies of the interfacial oxidation chemistry of Niobium and the influence such oxidation has on high-performance superconducting RF materials," Steven J. Sibener, Carl William Eisendrath Professor in chemistry and director of The James Franck Institute, and Lance Cooley, SRF Materials Group leader at Fermilab
• "High-energy particle physics time-of-flight detectors," Henry Frisch, professor in physics, Erik Ramberg, scientist II, Particle Physics Division at Fermilab, and Karen Byrum, scientist, High Energy Physics Division at Argonne
• "Numerical Cosmology at Fermilab and the University of Chicago," Nick Gnedin, associate professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Fermilab Theoretical Astrophysics Group, and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics; Scott Dodelson, associate professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and head of Fermilab's Theoretical Astrophysics Group, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics; and Andrey Kravtsov, associate professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and The Enrico Fermi Institute.

The above proposals were selected on the basis of the importance of the work; whether the collaboration creates a more powerful or convincing research program than could be achieved by working independently; and potential to achieve an ongoing collaboration.

The University-Fermilab SCI program was developed by the university as part of the laboratory management contract for Fermilab. A similar program for Argonne was also developed by the university as part of the management contract for Argonne.

Strategic Collaborative Initiatives provide additional opportunities for collaboration between university researchers and scientists at Argonne and Fermilab. Through shared efforts, we hope to create more powerful research programs in areas that support the scientific priorities of both laboratories.