As of 1 January, the Universities Research Association (URA), which has managed Fermilab since the lab’s inception 40 years ago, is sharing the responsibility with the University of Chicago. The Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the pair’s Fermi Research Alliance a $1.6 billion, five-year management contract.
“This is new management for a new era,” says Michael Turner, an astrophysicist at Chicago and a member of the FRA board. With other high-energy labs winding down or shifting focus (see Physics Today, May 2005, page 26), the future of the field in the US “is on the shoulders of Fermilab,” says Turner. Changes at the lab, he adds, are “profound. Twenty years ago, the strategy at Fermilab would have had three elements: Accelerator, accelerator, accelerator. Now the three elements are the energy frontier, neutrinos, and particle astrophysics.”
Fermilab has increased its breadth, agrees lab director Pier Oddone. “But we’re...
