URA 2006-2007 Annual Report

Message from the URA President

The year 2006 was a notable year of transition in the history of URA and our 90 member universities, as well as for Fermilab, our flagship enterprise. In keeping with a new DOE policy that required all DOE national laboratory contracts to be subjected to competition, DOE in the spring of 2006 issued a Request for Proposals for the new Fermilab management and operation contract to begin January 1, 2007. With that in mind, in the fall of 2005 the Trustees of URA undertook a major reassessment of the management structure that might best serve a Fermilab future which includes 1) the pending shutdown of the Tevatron when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) begins physics experiments at CERN in Europe, and 2) the ability thereafter to attract to Fermilab the proposed follow-on International Linear Collider (ILC).

As a consequence, the URA Trustees proposed, and the Council of Presidents at its annual meeting in February 2006 approved, a new partnership between URA and the University of Chicago (UChicago), in order to best prepare for a future at Fermilab which we all hope will include an ILC sited in northern Illinois. Accordingly, URA and the UChicago formed a new company in equal ownership, Fermi Research Alliance, LLC (FRA), for the purpose of submitting a proposal for the management and operation of Fermilab. EG&G, Inc. later joined the proposal as a named subcontractor. In August of 2006 the FRA team submitted its written proposal, and in September our team made oral presentations before the DOE selection panel.

On November 1, DOE announced the selection of FRA as the new Fermilab contractor. The URA-UChicago proposal received one of the highest scores ever awarded in a competitive DOE laboratory contract solicitation. FRA officially became the Fermilab contractor on January 1, 2007. Director Pier Oddone now also holds the title of President of FRA, LLC. The new FRA Board of Directors supersedes the former Fermilab Board of Overseers. Of its 24 members, half are appointed by UChicago and half by URA. At this writing, the FRA Board has had two meetings under the Chairmanship of University of Chicago President, Bob Zimmer.

Now beginning his third year as Fermilab Director, Pier Oddone presides over a Tevatron that continued to set new performance records throughout 2006 and into 2007; a world-leading program in neutrino physics; and a burgeoning agenda in experimental particle astrophysics— all as he and Fermilab, now working closely with Argonne National Laboratory, begin to lay the groundwork to host the proposed ILC, an electron-positron collider that would be the next major energy-frontier accelerator after the LHC.

In the meantime, Fermilab will remain the world leader at the high energy frontier of particle physics for most of this decade, and the Laboratory is already reaping outstanding physics returns from its second multi-year discovery campaign, “Collider Run II.“ Indeed, in 2007 the Tevatron has delivered more than twice as much integrated “luminosity” (number of proton-antiproton collisions) to the CDF and DZero experiments as in 2006. Fermilab’s scientific and management talent also continues to lead U.S. participation in the LHC, in preparation for the expected 2008 startup. And Dr. Barry Barish of Caltech works from his office at Fermilab, and around the world, as leader of the Global Design Effort (GDE) to research and plan for the ILC. Early in 2007, the GDE reported its initial cost estimate for the ILC.

In its experimental hall deep underground, the Neutrinos from the Main Injector (NUMI) facility at Fermilab is also rapidly accumulating data, along with its sibling long-baseline MINOS detector at the former Soudan iron mine in northern Minnesota. Early in 2007, the MiniBooNE experiment completed gathering data and its “box” was opened to reveal its much-anticipated results. With plans for the new “NOνA” experiment in northern Minnesota, Fermilab is rapidly becoming the world center for accelerator-based neutrino physics. The Soudan mine also hosts the laboratory leading the search for enigmatic Cold Dark Matter in the universe. This and other undertakings in the realm of astrophysics and cosmology constitute a major new theme for Fermilab and its recently formed Institute for Particle Astrophysics.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey collaboration continues to produce spectacular data of truly cosmic significance— data which have produced the largest number of mostcited astronomy publications of any ground or spacebased observatory. In Mendoza Province Argentina, construction is essentially complete on the 17-nation Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory. Events already recorded by Auger comprise the world’s largest data-set on ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, approaching 10²⁰ eV— some 100 million times greater than the energy produced by Fermilab’s Tevatron. The Auger Collaboration recently published its first findings based on those data. Under the outstanding leadership of Project Manager Paul Mantsch of Fermilab, Auger is on track (and under budget) for completion by the end of 2007, even as plans are being laid for subsequent construction of the complementary northern hemisphere array, to be sited in southeastern Colorado.

In the midst of these scientific successes, Fermilab continues to carry out its vitally important educational mission by producing the best of America’s next generation of scientists and leaders. In 2006, work carried out at Fermilab again resulted in the award of well over 100 Ph.D. degrees. Each year URA highlights this important measure of research productivity and vitality at Fermilab by awarding the annual URA Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Prize. Similarly, URA sponsors Fermilab’s annual Alvin Tollestrup Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Research.

The 2006 Annual Meeting of the URA Council of Presidents (our “shareholders”) was held in early February, with David Baltimore, then President of California Institute of Technology, presiding and concluding his year as Council Chair. Similarly, in late January 2007, Susan Hockfield, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology presided after chairing the Council during the key Fermilab transition year of 2006. As always at thesemeetings, URA’s corporate businesswas combined with the now traditional Policy Forum, which featured addresses by John Marburger, former Chairman of the URA Board of Trustees and now Science Advisor to President Bush; Senator Lamar Alexander, then Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy; Congressman Bart Gordon, new Chair of the House Committee on Science; DOE Secretary Sam Bodman; DOE Under Secretary for Science Ray Orbach; and NSF Director Arden Bement. Some 70 URA member universities were again represented at both the 2006 and 2007 meetings.

URA has always enjoyed the generous voluntary service of numerous distinguished individuals, who provide leadership and oversight on our Board of Trustees, on the Fermilab Board of Overseers, and now the new FRA Board. We are especially grateful to: Joe B. Wyatt, Chancellor Emeritus of Vanderbilt University, and Chair of our Board of Trustees, for his long and diligent service; Robert Galvin, former Chairman and CEO of Motorola, for his wise counsel to URA as Vice-Chair of the Trustees; Emanuel Fthenakis, former Chairman and CEO of Fairchild Industries, who continues to lend his considerable experience and expertise as Chair of our Audit Committee; and Don Hartill, Professor of Physics at Cornell University for his years of exemplary service as Chair of the Fermilab Board of Overseers.

This is just a sampling of the extraordinary talent that assembles voluntarily from around the country and the world to assist URA and our funding agencies in their undertakings, reaffirming the benefits that derive from the URA partnership between Fermilab and our member research universities. This paradigm of universitygovernment- laboratory partnership has been frequently emulated at other agencies, to the considerable benefit of the nation’s research enterprise.

As we write new chapters in the history of URA’s scientific endeavors, our vision remains grounded in the original URA Articles of Incorporation, key excerpts of which appear on the inside cover of this report. In keeping with that charter, URA remains ready to respond to other appropriate opportunities to serve the U.S. and international research community. We look forward to another exciting year of service to our university community and to the American people, as we continue the infinite voyage of scientific discovery.

URA President, Frederick M. Bernthal