DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Kevin Pitts of the University of Illinois has been named chief research officer at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory beginning March 1. His focus will be on oversight for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, including advancing scientific excellence across the laboratory through strong communication, collaboration and coordination with the Department of Energy and other partners. He joins the laboratory as it prepares to usher in a new era of science and innovation in particle physics research and discovery. We are proud to have Kevin Pitts join Fermilab at a time when DUNE is underway, said Joe Lykken, deputy director for research at Fermilab. His leadership and research collaboration with Fermilab make him the ideal person to direct the development of the DUNE research program both at the laboratory and with our partner institutions.
DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Building something as complex as a superconducting cryomodule takes the efforts of an entire team of scientists, engineers and technicians. This picture was taken in January 2020 in Fermilab s Industrial Center Building at the end of the SSR1 cryomodule assembly. (Photo: Lynn Johnson, Fermilab)
There is a first time for everything. Sometimes that thing is a highly complex machine designed to accelerate an 800-million-electronvolt proton beam to enable decades worth of cutting-edge experiments at the United States foremost particle physics laboratory.
In January, scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy s Fermilab successfully completed phase-one testing on a prototype of the first superconducting cryomodule to be fully designed, assembled and tested at Fermilab for the PIP-II accelerator.
DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
How long have you been at Fermilab?
I m coming up on 26 years in March. I ve been with the Department of Energy national labs for a little over 32 years overall. I did my graduate work at Brookhaven National Lab on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, then I came to Fermilab. I worked in operations here for a little bit, then I worked on electron cooling and FAST/IOTA, and now I m working on the PIP-II accelerator project.
What do you do for PIP-II?
I m responsible for machine protection systems to make sure that the accelerator won t have excessive beam loss or issues that will cause damage to the very expensive cryogenic systems. The protection system is critical in order to operate the test bed for PIP-II, called PIP2IT.
DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Engineers and technicians in the UK have started production of key piece of equipment for a major international science experiment.
The UK government has invested $89 million (£65 million) in the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, a particle physics experiment being built by the U.S. Department of Energy s Fermilab at locations in both Illinois and South Dakota. DUNE will study elusive particles called neutrinos in a bid to advance our understanding of the origin and structure of the universe.
DUNE will measure the so-called oscillations of the neutrinos as they travel at nearly the speed of light. An upgraded particle accelerator at Fermilab (outside Chicago) will accelerate subatomic particles and smash them into a target, forming a beam of neutrinos that will be fired 800 miles through the Earth s crust to a specialized detector being built deep underground in Lead, South Dakota.
DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science has awarded funding to Fermilab to use machine learning to improve the operational efficiency of Fermilab s particle accelerators.
These machine learning algorithms, developed for the lab s accelerator complex, will enable the laboratory to save energy, provide accelerator operators with better guidance on maintenance and system performance, and better inform the research timelines of scientists who use the accelerators.
Engineers and scientists at Fermilab, home to the nation s largest particle accelerator complex, are designing the programs to work at a systemwide scale, tracking of all the data resulting from the operation of the complex s nine accelerators. The pilot system will be used on only a few accelerators, with the plan to extend the program tools to the entire accelerator chain.