Users Meeting 2015
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Fermilab Director
Nigel Lockyer
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Every June, scientists from around the world come to Fermilab for our annual Users Meeting. Last week almost 500 scientists attended the 48th such meeting, including many students and postdocs who are spending a significant portion of their summer here at Fermilab to do research.
Our progress in transitioning from the Tevatron era to a P5-aligned research program focused on neutrinos, the LHC and muons is evident in the list of more than 40 talks given at this year's meeting. And judging by the roughly 350 new users who have signed up with Fermilab this year, we are on the right track.
This is an important year for the particle physics community as Fermilab prepares to host LBNF and DUNE, which will be the first major international science project hosted by DOE. In May, CERN and the United States signed an agreement that opens the way for CERN to participate in experiments hosted in the United States. We now have institutions in 26 countries working on DUNE. At the Users Meeting, Laura Fields and Elaine McCluskey gave talks on the status of DUNE and LBNF. In addition, Lionel Prost outlined the plans for PIP-II, which will upgrade our accelerator complex to enable us to deliver more neutrino beam for our flagship experiment.
Glen Crawford, DOE, and Jim Shank, NSF, presented the view from the funding agencies' perspective and highlighted the investments that the agencies make in high-energy physics projects. This includes funding of advances in accelerator technologies and advanced scientific computing.
I'd like to thank Bill Louis, Bill Lee, Thomas Strauss and the rest of the Users Executive Committee for organizing a terrific Users Meeting program and our Italian collaborators for a wonderful Festa Italiana on the opening night of the meeting. A big thank you also goes to the members of our Conference Office.
Editor's note: Videos of the Users Meeting talks are available on the Fermilab Visual Media Services website. Mark the video box and use the search term "Users2015".
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