Fermilab Today

	Tuesday, June 10, 2014

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Calendar

Tuesday, June 10

9 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
ASTA Users Meeting - Building 327 Conference Room

10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
New Perspectives - One West

Noon
Undergraduate Lecture Series - One West
Speaker: Maurice Ball, Fermilab
Title: Mechanical Engineering

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar (NOTE LOCATION) - Curia II
Speaker: Vaia Papadimitriou, Fermilab
Title: Overview of the LBNE Beamline Design

Wednesday, June 11

8 a.m.
Users Meeting Registration - Auditorium lobby

9 a.m.-6 p.m.
Users Meeting - Auditorium

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

8 p.m.
Fermilab Lecture Series - Auditorium
Speaker: Hitoshi Murayama
Title: The Quantum Universe
Tickets: $7

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Campaigns

Take Five

Weather

Chance of rain
71°/60°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, June 10

- Breakfast: All-American breakfast
- Breakfast: bacon, egg and cheese bagel
- Grown-up grilled cheese
- Smart cuisine: pork loin with raspberry sauce
- Italian lasagna
- Gourmet chicken salad croissant
- Classic cobb salad
- Green pork chili
- Chef's choice soup
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, June 11
Lunch
- Charmoula-marinated swordfish steaks
- Lime cilantro rice and sauteed pea pods
- Pineapple flan

Friday, June 13
Dinner
- Fresh corn and scallop johnnycakes with green onion sauce
- Coffee- and molasses-brined porkchops
- Creamy polenta with parmesan
- Roasted broccoli
- Espresso crepes with ice cream and bittersweet chocolate sauce

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Marcelle Soares-Santos wins 2014 Tollestrup Award

Marcelle
Soares-Santos

The Alvin Tollestrup Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Research committee has selected Marcelle Soares-Santos for the 2014 award. Soares-Santos will be recognized at the Fermilab Users Meeting on June 11.

In a statement, the award committee, chaired by Daniel Whiteson of the University of California, Irvine, acknowledged Soares-Santos "for her contributions to the Dark Energy Survey, which span from instrument construction and commissioning to high-level physics analysis."

The Universities Research Association gives out the award every year for outstanding work conducted by a postdoctoral researcher at Fermilab or in collaboration with Fermilab scientists.

Soares-Santos first came to Fermilab as a doctoral student at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. She began working on DES in 2010. During construction of the Dark Energy Camera at Fermilab and its installation at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, her role was to test instruments used in the survey through simulations.

"I think it's rewarding to build things, and I plan to do more of it," Soares-Santos said. "It is something really fascinating to know that there is a piece of equipment out there that is delivering amazing science to not only myself, but to the entire collaboration and the particle astrophysics community."

The camera is now up and running, and Soares-Santos uses it to look for new galaxy clusters in the images.

"Right now I'm producing a catalog that goes to the highest redshifts ever," Soares-Santos said. "It will also be one of the largest catalogs of galaxy clusters published."

Her work also extends beyond the original design of the survey and reaches into new realms of cosmology. She looks for light associated with gravitational wave events. To date, no one has ever observed these events, which are produced from neutron star collisions or collisions between a neutron star and a black hole.

Brenna Flaugher, head of Fermilab's Department of Astrophysics in the Particle Physics Division, recommended Soares-Santos for the award because of these diverse contributions to DES.

"Marcelle is an outstanding postdoc. She was at the controls for DECam's first sky observations," Flaugher said. "Since then, she's been working with the DES data to generate scientific results and develop new ways to understand the formation of our universe."

In addition to the recognition, Soares-Santos said the award has special meaning to her because of its namesake.

"It's a prize named after someone who also has a lot of instrumentation experience," Soares-Santos said. "Alvin is 90 years old. Last year I gave a talk, and he was sitting in the first row, asking questions and testing me. I want to be like that."

—Amanda Solliday

Photos of the Day

Tree swallow in the garden

A tree swallow hangs out in the Fermilab Garden Club area on a birdhouse fashioned by Jim Wendt, gardener and retired Fermilab technician. Photo: Elliott McCrory, AD

Elliott McCrory managed to get about 6 feet away before the swallow flew away. Photo: Elliott McCrory, AD

In the News

Sharing stories about science

From Physics Today, June 2014

When theoretical physicists Ben Lillie and Brian Wecht launched the Story Collider four years ago, they were merging their shared passions for science and performance. Lillie had jumped the academic ship a year earlier, and Wecht continues to balance academia and performance.

Inspired by other storytelling projects — especially the Moth — and drawing on their physics backgrounds, the two created a venue for people to tell true, personal stories about how their lives have intersected with science. The name Story Collider is meant to evoke the Large Hadron Collider. And, says Wecht, "we are bringing together, or colliding, science and personal experience."

Director's Corner

Communicating and implementing P5

Fermilab Director
Nigel Lockyer

There has been a lot of activity in the U.S. particle physics community and at Fermilab in the two weeks since the P5 report was presented to and accepted by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel. The work is going forward on two fronts: communicating the report and its implications to our many national and international stakeholders and analyzing how we can best advance and implement the report's recommendations.

Members of Congress are being informed about the P5 report and the future of U.S. particle physics through two events and an ongoing informational campaign led by the APS Division of Particles and Fields. At a briefing hosted on Thursday by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, P5 Chair Steve Ritz and other eminent physicists informed senators and their staff members about our field's strategic plan.

At 9 a.m. Central time today, Steve Ritz, SLAC Director Emeritus and co-chair of the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board Persis Drell, Berkeley Lab Physics Division Head Natalie Roe, and I will testify at a hearing for House members and their staff. The Energy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is holding the hearing, which focuses on the U.S. vision for particle physics after the Higgs boson discovery. The hearing is being webcast live.

Fermilab scientists and staff members have also been busy reading and interpreting the language in the report and starting to create plans that translate the recommendations into actions for the coming year. On May 27 our scientists held a retreat that looked at how the P5 recommendations interact with our current scientific program. On May 28 I summarized these discussions and the potential impacts for the laboratory as a whole in my all-hands meeting.

Three actions we are already taking at the lab include an evaluation of our available resources, redirection of accelerator effort to support PIP-II and determination of a path forward for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility. Thanks go to the project managers, engineers and scientists for putting in extra hours to analyze our available resources in the context of implementing the projects supported by the P5 vision. Thanks also to the accelerator team, which is now focusing R&D efforts on PIP-II to facilitate a quick start. Lastly, thanks to the many people in the U.S. and global neutrino community who have begun discussions on forming an international collaboration to carry out a U.S.-hosted LBNF.

The P5 committee developed an ambitious strategy that keeps the United States and Fermilab at the forefront of particle physics for the next two decades. The challenges to implement the plan are significant. I encourage the entire community to come together and turn the P5 strategy into a successful plan of action.

Construction Update

Cryogenic tank installed at
MC-1 Building

A liquid-nitrogen storage tank, formerly for Tevatron experiments, will be repurposed for experiments at the MC-1 Building. Photo: Carl Lundberg, AD

On May 28, the Facilities Engineering Services Section and the Accelerator Division placed a large liquid-nitrogen storage tank into position as part of the Muon Campus MC-1 Building construction. This vertical, 15,000-gallon tank was previously located at the Central Helium Liquefier, where it had been used for the Tevatron cryogenic system.

The move to MC-1 enables Fermilab's existing cryogenic infrastructure to be reused to meet new experimental needs.

The vertical tank was first picked with a large crane, tipped horizontally with a second crane for transportation and then raised for installation at MC-1. The tank will provide liquid nitrogen for both the Muon g-2 and Mu2e experiments.

—Bill Soyars

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