[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9338-9339]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO PIER ODDONE

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, next month Piermaria Oddone will retire 
as the director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, 
IL, after 8 years of service in that position. Pier has led Fermilab 
through some challenging times, but he has also led the lab to many 
remarkable achievements.
  Pier was born in Peru and after earning degrees from Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology and Princeton University, he worked at Caltech, 
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Stanford Linear Accelerator 
Center.
  Then in 2005, Pier and his wonderful wife, Barbara, moved to 
Fermilab, giving up the sunny west coast for cold Chicago winters. They 
arrived to 6,800-acres of former farmland that Pier and the Fermilab 
team have worked to restore to its native prairie. The laboratory 
maintains strong ties with the descendants of the farm families that 
once worked the land where Fermilab now sits, and every summer the 
families are invited to a picnic the lab hosts for the community.
  No other national lab director can boast of barns and a herd of 
bison.
  An avid photographer, Pier has spent many weekends walking the lab's 
grounds trying to capture its natural beauty through the lens. This is 
one of the things he has loved most about Fermilab. Whether raising 
bison or maintaining high-tech facilities, Pier has worked diligently 
to ensure that Fermilab continues to attract some of the best 
scientists from around the world.
  And it does.
  Today, Fermilab is America's premier particle physics laboratory, 
supporting thousands of scientists as they solve the mysteries of 
matter, energy, space, and time.
  Fermilab's mission is to drive discovery in particle physics by 
building and operating world-class accelerator and detector facilities, 
performing pioneering research with global partners, and transforming 
technologies for science and industry.
  It has often been said that physicists build huge, complex machines 
to study the tiniest, most basic particles. Well,

[[Page 9339]]

Fermilab physicists build facilities and create new technologies to 
carry out discovery science and contribute to America's technology 
base.
  During Pier's tenure as director, Fermilab launched a new era of 
scientific research focused on high-intensity particle beams through 
its cutting-edge muon and neutrino experiments.
  Fermilab also pushed forward the world's understanding of the dark 
matter and dark energy that constitute 96 percent of the universe with 
its leadership roles in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the state-of-
the-art Dark Energy Camera.
  While this work was advancing, more than 100,000 students, from 
kindergarten through high school, were welcomed to the laboratory. 
Fermilab's strong partnership with Illinois schools and teachers helps 
achieve their shared goal of inspiring young people to learn more about 
particle physics, environment, ecology, and accelerator science--and 
ultimately encouraging them to pursue careers in STEM fields.
  In addition, Fermilab's Tevatron particle collider laid the 
groundwork for the discovery of the Higgs particle last year by 
developing the technologies and analysis tools that helped confirm 
evidence of the Higgs boson's existence.
  And though the Tevatron has ended its extraordinary 28-year run, 
under Pier's guidance Fermilab has maintained its position at the 
forefront of scientific research by serving as the U.S. hub for more 
than 1,000 physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider.
  The laboratory contributed large magnets and other components key to 
the construction of the Large Hadron Collider and its experiments. Pier 
even created a control room at Fermilab so U.S. scientists can perform 
experiments at the Collider remotely.
  In his last year as director, Fermilab partnered with the State of 
Illinois to construct the Illinois Accelerator Research Center, or I-
ARC, which aims to accelerate the transition of technologies developed 
for particle physics research to other sectors of society.
  I-ARC will also assist small businesses as a test facility, providing 
technical expertise in accelerator technology and serving as a training 
ground for the next generation of accelerator scientists and engineers.
  Beyond the lab's accomplishments, Pier has been awarded many honors 
in his own right. He won the Panofsky Award of the American Physical 
Society for the invention of the Asymmetric B-Factory, a new kind of 
particle collider designed to study the difference between matter and 
antimatter. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is an elected member of the 
National Academy of Sciences. And, in case one was not enough, he also 
holds an honorary doctorate from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
  Needless to say, it is likely that Pier's contributions to particle 
physics and to Fermilab will continue to benefit Illinois and the 
international research community long after he retires next month.
  When asked what he plans to do upon his retirement, Pier talks about 
making wine on the vineyard he and his wife own in California.
  At one point he even thought of this as a field of research at 
Fermilab. He would try planting grapevines at the lab, hoping that the 
heat from the beam lines would keep the vines warm enough to survive 
the winters. This way, the lab could make wine while unlocking the 
mysteries of the universe. It might not be a bad idea, but 
unfortunately he never had any time to test the experiment.
  Now, after 8 years as director, Pier's wine-making skills may be a 
little rusty, but I am sure he will be back to harvesting his Cabernet 
and Zinfandel grapes in no time. And I am also sure that Pier and 
Barbara will find more time to spend with their 2-year-old 
granddaughter and the rest of their family.
  On behalf of the people of Illinois and the global community of 
particle physicists, I thank Pier for his 8 dedicated years at Fermilab 
and congratulate him on his successful career. I wish him all the best 
in his retirement.

                          ____________________