Physicist Bonnie Fleming has taken on a prominent new role as chief research officer and deputy director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. She will also hold a faculty position as a professor of physics at the University of Chicago.
Fermilab’s 6,800-acre site is located in Batavia, Illinois, and is managed by the Fermi Research Alliance for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The Fermi Research Alliance is a partnership of the University of Chicago and Universities Research Association Inc., a consortium of 89 research universities. Since 1967, the Fermilab has sought answers to questions such as: What are we made of? How did the universe begin? What secrets do the smallest, most elemental particles of matter hold, and how can they help us understand the intricacies of space and time?
Dr. Fleming was a professor of physics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale University and a faculty member of Yale’s Wright Lab. She had been on the faculty at Yale since 2004. In 2006, Dr. Fleming, using part of her National Science Foundation Career grant, initiated the Girls Science Investigations, a weekend program that allows New Haven girls in grades 6 to 8 to engage in hands-on science experiments at Yale, guided by a team of volunteer mentors.
“It was a very difficult decision to leave Yale after many wonderful years, first in the high energy physics group in the department of physics and later in Wright Laboratory,” Dr. Fleming said. “I have treasured both these early years at Yale and later the incredible facility and community of Wright Lab. I will dearly miss my colleagues in physics and across the university, and Yale.”
Professor Fleming’s work focuses on neutrinos, which are neutrally charged subatomic particles that pass through nearly all matter in the universe without being affected. Specifically, she studies accelerator-based neutrino oscillation and neutrino-scattering physics.
Dr. Fleming earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2001.