Fermilab celebrates Women's History Month in March

Jane Wilson, wife of Fermilab's founding director Robert Wilson, was a community pioneer. Profiles of women at Fermilab are available on Fermilab's Women's History Web site.

Women at Fermilab have helped to shape the laboratory into what it is today.

Celebrate the contributions that women at Fermilab have made to the laboratory's science, culture, community and education at events throughout the month of March.

Join Fermilab's Diversity Office for a variety of lectures, discussions and interactive features as part of the laboratory's recognition of Women's History Month.

On March 3, 11 and 17, join women pioneers at Fermilab for lunchtime discussions of women throughout the '70s, '80s, '90s and beyond. Lunchtime talks take place from 12-1 p.m. in the One East conference room.

Celebrate International Women's Day on Monday, March 8. Women will staff some experiment control rooms, and Fermilab Director Pier Oddone will discuss the day's significance with CERN Director General Rolf Heuer via a videoconference in the Remote Operations Center.

On March 9, learn more about the barriers and obstacles girls face in learning about science, technology, engineering and math at a 1:30 p.m. lecture in Ramsey Auditorium. In her talk, "Gender, Race and Science Education," Sandra Hanson, a sociology professor from The Catholic Universities of America, will discuss the shortage of women in science. The talk is free and open to the public.

Join artist Virginia Broersma from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the second floor art gallery on Wednesday, March 10, for an artist lecture about her exhibit, "I Live in a Duplex." Broersma's paintings will remain on display in Fermilab's Art Gallery through May 3. Broersma will also be available at an artist reception the same day from 5-7 p.m. in the Art Gallery.

Finally, join artist Rose Moore on Tuesday, March 22, for an art lecture titled "Women as Classics of Art" from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. in Curia II.

Visit the Women's History Month Web site for more information.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Rick Cavanaugh named new LPC co-coordinator

Ian Shipsey (left) and Rick Cavanaugh are the co-coordinators for the LPC at Fermilab.

The elevators in Fermilab's 16-story Wilson Hall move slowly. According to legend, Robert Wilson, the laboratory's founding director, designed them that way to encourage conversation between their passengers.

Rick Cavanaugh, a physicist with a joint appointment between the University of Illinois-Chicago and Fermilab, remembers meeting Dan Green for the first time in one of those infamous elevator rides in 2002.

Cavanaugh, then at University of Florida, was visiting the lab as a new member of the CMS collaboration. Green was just starting to develop the LHC Physics Center on the 11th floor of Wilson Hall as a place to provide support for CMS collaborators working in the U.S.

"He communicated the value of remote collaboration tools," Cavanaugh said. "He knew it would be essential for his vision of how the LPC should be."

Little did they know that almost eight years later, Cavanaugh would be stepping into Green's shoes as the new co-coordinator of the LPC.

Cavanaugh, a computing specialist who hails from Alaska, has always been a believer in remote operations and couldn't be more thrilled that Green's dreams have become a reality since that elevator conversation.

Today rather than flying across the Atlantic, CMS collaborators in the U.S. can take shifts in the Remote Operations Center at Fermilab, monitoring data quality and the detector subsystems. The LPC has also increasingly become a way for its roughly 70 scientists from Fermilab and international universities to stay connected to their collaborators at CERN and around the globe.

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-- Elizabeth Clements

Immigration law information session at noon today

Learn more about immigration law during an information session from 12-1:30 p.m. today in One West. Two local attorneys specializing in immigration law will discuss a range of immigration issues, including:

• Preliminary background information
• Description of agencies, immigration processes and potential delays
• Extraordinary ability visa
• National interest waiver
• Options for H1-B Visa holders at all points during their status

A question and answer session will take place following the presentation. Attendees may bring lunch. The Users' Executive Committee is hosting this event.

Physics is a hoot when it's a tweet

Kids today.

Such may have been the disapproving sigh of an observer watching a busload of teenagers tour Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory last week. The 11th and 12th graders from Appleton, Wisconsin, spent an awful lot of time typing away on their cell phones. But be not dismayed, O horrified observer. They were just doing their homework.

"I was looking for a way for them to journal, but in a more realistic way. I think that's what texting is and definitely what Twitter is-a way to journal," says Dale Basler, instigator of all that cell-phone gazing and a physics teacher at Appleton East High School.

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