Recovery Act gives LBNE team chance to grow
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From left: Joel Sefcovic, Laura Sujan and Tracy Lundin joined the LBNE project thanks to Recovery Act funds. |
A growing staff of project specialists is working behind the scenes to prepare the proposed Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment for its upcoming review.
Thanks to funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, LBNE has expanded this project team, which is developing the design, cost and schedule for the experiment’s beamline, massive detectors and associated technology and facilities. Fermilab used part of the $9 million in ARRA funding it received for long-baseline neutrino research to fill much-needed LBNE project staff positions. ARRA funding will pay for the positions for about a year, and then the LBNE project funds will take over.
“The ARRA funds are extremely important, not only to create jobs, but also to sustain jobs,” said newly hired contractor Laura Sujan, contracted project controls specialist for conventional facilities. “The projects I’ve worked on over the past year have all come from ARRA funding, and those positions would not have been available to me had it not been for the recovery funds.”
Before coming to LBNE in September, Sujan worked on an ARRA-funded project to renew Chicago Transit Authority blue line train tracks in downtown Chicago.
LBNE’s two other most recent ARRA-funded additions are contractor Joel Sefcovic, project controls specialist for the liquid argon subproject, and Tracy Lundin, Level 2 manager for conventional facilities.
Sefcovic, who has worked on several other ARRA-funded projects at Fermilab, joined the LBNE team in September. Lundin joined in August.
Lundin, Sujan and Sefcovic are already heavily involved with LBNE and in helping the project prepare for its approaching CD-1 review.
“The best part of my job so far is getting to know more about LBNE,” Sefcovic said. “Learning about the proposed neutrino beamline from Fermilab to the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory in South Dakota is really interesting, and being able to help move the project forward and advance science is really rewarding.”
-- Amelia Williamson Smith
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