Profile: Jamie Ray, a high schooler on the Higgs hunt

Jamie Ray, a 2009 graduate of the Illinois Math and Science Academy, works with Craig Group at CDF.

When Jamie Ray arrived at the CDF trailers at the start of 11th grade, he was a little overwhelmed.

"Back then, all I knew about particle physics was from books," he said, "and books don't talk about sitting down with a million events to analyze."

That was nearly two years ago, on Ray's first day in an independent research program for students at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, the magnet high school that Fermilab Director Emeritus Leon Lederman founded in 1985. Through IMSA's Student Inquiry and Research program, Ray signed up to spend every Wednesday analyzing CDF experiments with a Fermilab scientist.

It didn't take long for Ray to get over his intimidation and get to work. His mentor, CDF scientist Craig Group, was confident that the Ray and fellow IMSA students would make valuable contributions to Fermilab research.

"We don't give them projects we've already worked out, so we learn a lot from the problems they run into," Group said. "We're trying to understand things at the same time that they are."

After a few weeks of learning computer programming languages, Ray delved into some data on his own, initially focusing on Z boson decays. In the summer after his junior year, Ray worked full-time at CDF.

"What sets Jamie apart is that he's not afraid of a hard problem," Group said. "He's happy to spend all day on a difficult project without getting frustrated."

During his senior year, Ray's focus shifted to one of the hottest topics in modern science -- the hunt for the Higgs boson. His name will appear as a co-author on an upcoming Physical Review Letters paper about that search.

In the fall, Ray will head to Stanford University. Picking a major won't be easy -- Ray's interests stretch from engineering to history to philosophy -- but physics is a possibility, he said. In any case, he will not forget his time at Fermilab.

"At first, I didn't think I'd be able to make a meaningful contribution," he explained. "It's satisfying to know I've done useful work here."

-- Rachel Carr

New employees - July 20

From left: Sergey Cheban, TD; Michelle Stancari, PPD; Farah Khalid, PPD; David Featherston, PPD; Julie Kurnat, TD; and Sungwon Park, WDRS.

Window washing begins today

Interior and exterior Wilson Hall window washing will take place for most of the remainder of August.

Crews will wash exterior windows during phase one of the schedule beginning today and extending through Friday.

Phase two of the schedule will begin Monday, August 10, and will include interior window-washing, including double-paned windows. Crews will work from the top floors down, beginning with floors 15 and 14 on Monday, 13 and 12 on Tuesday, 11 through eight on Wednesday, seven through four on Thursday and three through one on Friday. Phases three and four of the schedule will take place during the week of Monday, August 17, and include the mezzanine and ground floors. Crews will wash the windows in Wilson Hall's atrium during nights the week of August 17.

Please clear all items from in front of windows on days work is scheduled for your floor. Contact Enixe Castro at x2798 with any questions.

Hunting for neutrinos in Minnesota

From DOE Office of Science American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Newsletter, July, 2009

Construction crews began digging at the future site of the NOvA neutrino detector facility in Ash River, MN, on June 1. The facility is designed to detect neutrinos originating at DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) 500 miles away in Batavia, IL.

The Recovery Act provided funds for the civil construction project.

"It's pretty much earth work now," said Davin "Buddy" Juusola, senior project manager for Adolfson & Peterson. But once the dirt is cleared, the construction crew will face the Canadian Shield, a mass of 2.7 billion-year-old Precambrian rock that stretches 3 million square miles across Canada and dips into a small northern edge of the U.S.

Read more (pdf)