Lia Merminga | |
---|---|
7thDirector of the Fermilab | |
Assumed office April 18, 2022 | |
President | Joe Biden |
Preceded by | Nigel Lockyer |
Personal details | |
Born | Nikolitsa Merminga |
Nationality | Greece,United States,Canada |
Alma mater | University of Michigan |
Known for | Accelerator Physics |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics |
Institutions | SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility TRIUMF Fermilab |
Thesis | A study of nonlinear dynamics in the Fermilab Tevatron (1989) |
Doctoral advisor | Lawrence W. Jones,Donald A. Edwards |
Nikolitsa (Lia) Merminga is a Greek-born accelerator physicist. In 2022,she was appointed director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,the first woman to hold the position. [1] She has worked at other national laboratories in Canada and the United States.
Merminga grew up in Greece,where she attended all-girl middle and high schools. By the time she was sixteen years old,she knew she wanted to be a physicist,having been inspired by her family members,a high school physics teacher,and a biography of Marie Curie. [2] [3] [4] She received her undergraduate degree from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 1983,where she studied physics. She then moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in physics at the University of Michigan. There,she completed a Master’s of Science in Physics and a Master’s of Science in Mathematics and worked with doctoral advisors Lawrence W. Jones and Donald A. Edwards. [5] [3] [4] She completed her thesis,A Study of Nonlinear Dynamics in the Fermilab Tevatron, [6] using data from Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator [2] and completed her PhD in 1989. [5]
After completing her PhD,Merminga held a postdoctoral position at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the accelerator theory group. [5] [3] In 1992,she joined Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility as a member of the Center for Advanced Studies of Accelerators (CASA). In 2002,she became director of CASA's beam physics group,her first managerial position. [5] [3] In 2008,she joined Canada's TRIUMF laboratory as head of their accelerator program, [5] [3] one of the most senior scientific positions in Canada. [7] There,she oversaw the design and construction of an accelerator that produced rare isotopes for use in medicine and nuclear physics. [3] She returned to SLAC in 2015,when she became that lab's Associate Director for Accelerators and a professor at Stanford University. [4] Around the same time,she took on another leadership role as a member of the U.S. Department of Energy's inaugural Energy Sciences Leadership Group from 2016 to 2017. [8] Merminga returned to Fermilab in 2018 as director of the lab's Proton Improvement Plan II (PIP-II) project, [2] the first particle accelerator project with major contributions by other countries to be hosted in the United States. [9]
On 5 April 2022,it was announced that Merminga had been appointed as the next director of Fermilab. [10] In addition to her role at Fermilab,as of February 10,2023,Merminga serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at Illinois State University. [11]
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory,originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park,California,United States. Founded in 1962,the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator,a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab),located in Batavia,Illinois,near Chicago,is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.
The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator in the United States,at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,east of Batavia,Illinois,and was the highest energy particle collider until the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was built near Geneva,Switzerland. The Tevatron was a synchrotron that accelerated protons and antiprotons in a 6.28 km (3.90 mi) circumference ring to energies of up to 1 TeV,hence its name. The Tevatron was completed in 1983 at a cost of $120 million and significant upgrade investments were made during its active years of 1983–2011.
Nigel Stuart Lockyer is a British-American experimental particle physicist. He is the current director of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education (CLASSE) as of May 1,2023. He was the Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab),in Batavia,Illinois,the leading particle physics laboratory in the United States,from September 2013 to April 2022.
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