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What is happening with Alberta’s (Canada) Ingenuity Lab?

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Alberta’s Ingenuity Lab (first mentioned here in a November 19, 2013 posting) seems to have been launched sometime in 2012 (or maybe 2013). It;s a province of Alberta initiative and at the time of I first heard of it I questioned the necessity for another nanotechnology institution in Alberta (or anywhere else in Canada for that matter).

Amuse bouche: a roundup of the Canadian nanotechnology scene

Since 2012/3 a great many things have changed. The National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) seems to have become almost completely dormant; the same can be said for Canada’s NanoPortal and nanoAlberta.

Adding to this brief roundup of the nanotechnology scene in Canada, the province of Alberta lists their various facilities on their Nanotechnology and microsystems webpage. As that page was last updated on 2012 you may find the information no longer viable.

A quick search for NanoQuébec yielded Prima Québec; Pôle recherche innovation matériaux avancés (that’s research for innovation and advanced materials; I think). Finally, there is still a Nano Ontario.

Should anyone know of a Canadian ‘nano’ institution that should be included, please do let me know in the ‘comments’.

Ingenuity Lab: Basics

The University of Alberta’s Faculty of Engineering’s Engineering Research webpage (copyright 2002-2018) describes the Ingenuity Lab this way,

ingenuity Lab (the Nanotechnology Accelerator) is a large scale ($100M), 10-year, multidisciplinary research and development initiative co-located at the Faculty of Engineering,  the University of Alberta and the National Institute for Nanotechnology. Led by chemical engineering professor and Canada Research Chair holder Carlo Montemagno, iNgenuity is focused on groundbreaking bionanotechnology advances and innovative business practices that will enable Alberta to become a world-leading centre for nanotechnology innovation. (www.ingenuitylab.ca)

That’s a very large enterprise by Canadian standards.

After a great deal of initial promotion for both the lab and its director, Dr. Carlo Montemagno, the lab settled into a pattern of making bold announcements, many of which I covered here,

The blog search engine here privileges titles containing the search term (in this case, Ingenuity Lab) first and then restarts, in date order, all of the other ‘nontitle’ mentions. (I stopped with the titles.)

Last year (2017), there was a major change at the Ingenuity Lab, the director, Dr. Carlo Montemagno, moved to Illinois to become the Chancellor for Southern Illinois University (SIU). Unfortunately, I did not receive any response from Dr. Montemagno to the interview questions I sent him, twice, via email. I also emailed, once, SIU’s chief marketing and communications, Rae Goldsmith. For the curious, here are the questions,

(1) What differences did you experience as a researcher between the Canadian approach to nanotechnology (the National Institute of Nanotechnology is one of the Canada National Research Council’s institute’s) and the US approach (National Nanotechnology Initiative, a central funding hub and research focus for the US government)?

(2) Will your experience in Canada affect how you approach your work at SIU? Assuming, there is some influence, how will that experience affect your work at SIU?

(3) What are you most proud of achieving while leading Alberta’s Ingenuity Lab?

(4) Could you reflect on the trends you see with regard to nanotechnology not just in Canada and/or the US but internationally too?

(5) Is there anything else you’d like to add?

My questions were pretty much puffballs. In the meantime, it seems Dr. Montemagno attracted some serious journalistic interest, from a February 21, 2018 article by Dawn Rhodes for the Chicago Tribune,

When Chancellor Carlo Montemagno took the helm at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in July [2017], he set to work on a plan to dismantle and rebuild academics at the struggling campus, which has hemorrhaged enrollment over the past several years. His idea was a bold one, rarely if ever attempted at a large public university: eliminate academic departments.

The plan drew ire as well as praise, opening some bitter fissures among faculty, students and staff. That discord seems to have grown in recent weeks, particularly as the chancellor has become embroiled in controversies that have intensified scrutiny of his leadership.

In January [2018], SIU student paper The Daily Egyptian revealed the university hired Montemagno’s daughter and son-in-law shortly after he assumed the chancellor post. The investigation showed that the couple’s work history traces the same path as Montemagno’s, with the pair having held jobs at the same institutions he worked at for the past decade.

There have also been complaints that Montemagno is too directly influencing other hiring at the university — which he denies.

Both issues are the subjects of separate ethics investigations, SIU system President Randy Dunn said.

Then on Thursday [February 15, 2018?], the chancellor said he used part of his relocation allotment from the university to help cover the costs of moving his daughter’s family to southern Illinois, as well, adding up to $16,076.45. Montemagno said “there was a misunderstanding about what could be covered in the move” so he picked up the tab for part of the added costs and reimbursed SIU for the remaining expense of moving his daughter’s household.

The revelation that the new chancellor’s family members received jobs at Southern Illinois, which cut dozens of positions just weeks before his arrival and in the midst of the two-year state budget impasse, irked many at the university. It also drew sharp retorts from a member of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

In an interview Monday [February 19, 2018?], Montemagno said he recognized the optics of using part of his moving allowance for his daughter’s benefit and decided to pay back the university. But he said he never hid the fact that his family members were hired by SIU and he shrugged off criticism he has received in recent weeks. Although it caught some by surprise, SIU leaders had, in fact, approved the family hires as part of the chancellor’s hiring negotiations.

…

Rhodes’ article provides fascinating insight into the political struggles currently taking place at SIU. I encourage you to read the piece in its entirety if you have the time.

Ingenuity Lab: We are family

The appearance of Melissa Germain (Montemagno’s daughter) and her husband, Jeffrey Germain (Montemagno’s son-in-law), in the article was a bit of a surprise. Both were involved with the Ingenuity Lab. (I contacted Melissa Germain years ago to get on the lab’s media list to receive all their news releases. She agreed to put me on the list but I never received anything from them. Whether that was by accident or by design, I’ll never know. Jeff Germain was, for a time, the Ingenuity Lab’s interim director.)

Logically, this means that the University of Alberta hired not only Dr. Montemagno but also his daughter and son-in-law. As Rhodes’ article notes, it’s not unusual for faculty members to insist their spouses also be given jobs. The surprise here is that Montemagno’s daughter and her spouse were part of the deal, informal (SIU?) or otherwise (Alberta?).

In trying to find more information about the Ingenuity Lab’s budgets and financials (unsuccessful), I stumbled across the glassdoor.ca site (accessed March 5, 2018), which features some comments about the working environment at Alberta’s Ingenuity lab,

11 Jul, 2017

Helpful (1)

“Family Run Lab with Public Funding at the University of Alberta”
Current Employee – Anonymous Employee in Edmonton, AB
Doesn’t Recommend
Negative Outlook

I have been working at Ingenuity Lab full-time (More than a year)

Pros

-You will learn how to handle uncomfortable environment very well.
-There are some good researchers and staffs in the group.

Cons

– It is a public funded lab that controls by family members. This is not the issue for a private company, but it makes it really unacceptable for a public funded research group.
– The family members without required credentials can override any decision easily.
– The management team (the family members) spend lots of public funding for publicity
-Some of the group members bend easily with wind to stay … Show More

Advice to Management

-Presenting FALSE FACTS has expiry date! It is important to leave good name behind.
-Bringing family members without any credentials on board is not being wise.
– Just investing on gaining publicity is not enough. Nowadays, having output has the final say.

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Other Employee Reviews for Ingenuity Lab

21 Mar, 2017

Helpful (3)
Ingenuity Lab Logo
“A family run business”

Former Employee – Anonymous in Edmonton, AB
Doesn’t Recommend
Negative Outlook

I worked at Ingenuity Lab full-time (More than a year)

Pros

Well funded lab with all the facilities located in the National Institute of Nanotechnology. The labs are at a great location and easy access to Tim Hortons.

Cons

All the administrative posts are filled with family members. No good communication between researchers and the director is surrounded by his trust worthy group of highly qualified politicians. The projects are all hypothetical and there is a lack of passion for hardcore fundamental research. They run as in commercial companies and does not belong in the NINT. They should relocate in the industrial areas of South Edmonton.

Advice to Management

Start publishing papers in peer reviewed journals rather than cheap publicity in local and national newspapers.

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8 Feb, 2016

Helpful (2)
Ingenuity Lab Logo
“Clouded vision of ingenuity”
Former Employee – Anonymous Employee

I worked at Ingenuity Lab full-time (Less than a year)

Pros

Plenty of funding, this place will be in business for at least the next three years. Most of the people are a pleasure to be around.

Cons

There is noticeable friction between different team leads. Lack of information between groups has led to a few costly mistakes. It is run much more like a company than research group, results that can make money or be patent-able are the only goals.

Advice to Management

Ditch the yes-men family members that you have installed, and hire industrial trained scientists if you want the results you are looking for.

It’s hard to know if there is one disgruntled person waging a campaign or if there are three very unhappy people from a lab team of about 100 scientists. But the complaints are made several months apart, which suggests three people and generally where there’s one complain there are more, unvoiced complaints. Interestingly, all three complaints focus on the Ingenuity Lab as a ‘family-run’ enterprise. It seems that Montemagno, like a certain US president, prefers to work with his family.

According to this article in The New Economy, Montemagno came to Alberta because it offered an opportunity to conduct research in a progressive fashion,,

In 2012, Dr Montemagno was lured back to the world of research when the opportunity to lead a large-scale nanotechnology accelerator initiative in Alberta materialised. His background traversing agricultural and bioengineering, petroleum engineering, and nanotechnology made him an ideal choice to lead the exciting new programme. The opportunity was significant and he viewed Alberta as a land of opportunity with an entrepreneurial spirit; he decided to make the move to Canada. The vision of advancing technologies to solve grand challenges recaptured his imagination. The initiative is now branded as Ingenuity Lab. [emphases mine]

Located within the University of Alberta, Canada, Ingenuity Lab is an assembly of multi-disciplinary experts who work closely to develop technological advancements in ways that are not otherwise possible. Not only is Ingenuity Lab different to other initiatives in the way it operates its goal-orientated and holistic approach, but also in the progressive way it conducts research. In this model, limitations on creativity that surround the traditional university faculty model (which rewards individual success and internal competition) are overcome.[emphases mine]

Three (at least) employees seem to suggest otherwise. Still, there are situations where trusted colleagues, familial or not, migrate together from one employer to another. For example, Nigel Lockyer was the Director for TRIUMF (Canada’s particle accelerator centre; formerly, Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics). He brought on board with him, Timothy Meyer someone with whom (I believe) he had a previous working/professional relationship. Lockyer is now the Director of the Fermilab (University of Chicago, Illinois, US) and guess who also works at the Fermilab? Lockyer and Meyer were quite successful at TRIUMF and they appear to be revitalizing the Fermi Lab, which until their tenure seemed moribund. (See: University of Chicago Sept. 27, 2017 news release: Nigel Lockyer appointed to second term as director of Fermilab; and Timothy Meyer’s profile page on the Fermilab website to confirm the biographical details for yourself.)

These days, the Ingenuity Lab (accessed March 5, 2017) lists Murray Gray, PhD, as their interim director. He is a professor emeritus from the University of Alberta. There is still an Ingenuity Lab website, Facebook account, and Twitter account. The Twitter account has been inactive since August 2017, their website is curiously empty, while the Facebook account boasts a relatively recent posting of a research paper.

Final thoughts

With all the money for science funding flying around, it seems like it might be time to start assessing the ROI (return on investment) for these projects and, perhaps, giving a closer eye to how it’s spent (oversight) in the first place. In Canada.

Other than an occasional provincial or federal audit that might or might not occur, is anyone providing consistent oversight for these multimillion dollar science investments? For example, the Canadian federal government recently announced $950M investment in five superclusters (see Feb. 15, 2018 Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada news release). One of the superclusters has to do with supply chains and AI (artificial intelligence. Here’s what Paul Wells in a Feb. 15, 2018 article for Maclean’s observed,

The AI supply-chain group from, essentially, Montreal (wait! I guess I’m just guessing about that) is comically gnomic. I could find no name of any actual person or company anywhere on the website. Only a series of Zen riddles. “Over 120 industrial and enabling institutions, from very large firms to start-ups, have joined forces in this journey,” the website says helpfully, “and we have strong momentum.”

You can see it for yourself here. Who will be providing oversight? At what intervals? And, how?

In searching for further information about funding and budgets, I found this (in addition to the feedback from disgruntled Ingenuity Lab employees), Dr. Carlo Montemagno received $556,295.06 in compensation and $40,215.81 for ‘other’ in 2016 and $538,345.35 in compensation and $37,815.98 for ‘other’ in 2015 (accessed March 5, 2018).

The information about Dr. Montemagno’s salary and benefits can be found on the University of Alberta’s Human Resource Services public Sector Compensation Disclosure page. Presumably, the 2017 figures have not yet been released, as well, Montegmagno’s 2017 salary .may not be disclosed for the same reason neither Melissa Germain’s nor Jeffrey Germain’s salaries are disclosed,

The Alberta government’s Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act (2015) requires that the University of Alberta disclose the name, position, compensation, non-monetary benefits and severance for all employees whose total compensation plus severance exceeds an annual threshold [emphasis mine]. Remuneration paid to members of the Board of Governors will also be disclosed. Disclosure must be published annually on or before June 30th for compensation paid in the previous calendar year. Employees who terminated between January 1 and June 30 that received pay in lieu of notice, pay during a period of notice and/or severance pay and the total of those amounts exceeds the threshold will be included on the disclosure list each December. The disclosure list will identify the name and the amount of severance. Any other compensation will be reported on the next June’s disclosure.

The Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act applies to more than 150 agencies, boards, and commissions, to independent offices of the Alberta Legislature, and to employees of Convenant Health.

For questions or concerns, please contact Wayne Patterson, Executive Director, Human Resource Services.

There may have been a good reason for Montemagno’s compensation of over 1/2 million dollars per year, for 2015 and 2016 at least. Researchers are expected to bring in money through research grants. I found one funding announcement for $1.7M from Natural Resources* Canada on the Ingenuity Lab’s news release page (accessed March 5, 2018).

Oddly, Dr. Montemagno was appointed chancellor at SIU on July 13, 2017 and his start date was August 15, 2017 (July 13, 2017 SIU news release). That’s unusually fast for an academic institution for a position at that level. Not to mention Montemagno’s position in Alberta.

SIU is not the only place to inspire Montemagno to dream (eliminate academic departments from their university as per Rhodes’ article). He dreamt big for Alberta too. From an Oct. 30,2015 article by Gary Lamphier for the Edmonton Journal,

…

Faced with so many serious challenges, it’s no surprise Alberta’s oilpatch and its once-envied economy are sputtering, prompting gleeful outbreaks of schadenfreude from Vancouver to Toronto.

But what if Alberta could upend the basic economic paradigm [emphasis mine] in which it operates? Suppose Alberta could curb its carbon emissions, thus shedding its nasty environmental reputation and giving it the social licence needed to build new oil pipelines, while diversifying the economy at the same time?

Sound impossible? Don’t be so sure. That’s Carlo Montemagno’s dream, and the world-renowned director of Alberta’s Ingenuity Lab, who heads a team of about 100 scientists, has a bold plan to do it. It’s called the carbon transformation project, and he hopes to pull it off by the end of this decade. [emphases mine]

If it works, the scheme would capture the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted at any one of dozens of Alberta industrial sites, from power plants to petrochemical facilities, without requiring any massive retrofits or the kind of multibillion-dollar investments associated with carbon sequestration.

Through a process employing artificial light, water and electricity, it would harness industrial CO2 emissions to create more than 70 commercially valuable carbon-containing chemicals, Montemagno says. Such chemicals could form the essential building blocks for dozens of consumer and industrial products, ranging from auto antifreeze and polyester fibres to food additives.

The plan is brilliant in its simplicity. Montemagno’s team aims to turn a bad thing — CO2 — into a good thing, one that creates value, wealth, and new jobs. And he hopes to do it without trashing Alberta’s existing oil-fired economy.

Instead, his concept involves simply tacking one more process onto the province’s industrial sites, thus creating valuable new feedstock for existing or new industries.

“If it all works, it means you can produce products you need to satisfy local economic needs, create more value from emissions, generate more revenue and more products,” says Montemagno, who has science degrees from Cornell University, Penn State, and a PhD in civil engineering and geological sciences from University of Notre Dame.

“The big argument today is, you burn fossil fuels and release CO2 into the atmosphere, and end up causing global warming,” he says.

“But the problem isn’t that you’re burning fossil fuels. The problem is you’re releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. So is there an opportunity to not release CO2 and instead capture and use it in other products? It’s really about stating the problem in the appropriate language.”

With funding from Alberta’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corp., Ingenuity Lab is hard at work developing a $1.3-million demonstration project to prove the concept. Montemagno hopes to have an industrial-scale pilot project running in three to four years. [emphasis mine]

…

Montemagno certainly had an exciting plan. And, 2018 would be around the time someone might expect to see the “industrial-scale pilot project for carbon transformation” mentioned (2015 + three to four years) in Lamphier’s article. Where is it? When is it starting?

And now, Montemagno has some exciting plans for SIU?

 

With regard to hiring family members, the Chicago Sun-Time Editorial Board (Feb. 5, 2018 editorial) does not approve,

Here’s a pro tip for you chancellors at hard-up public universities who are thinking about hiring your own daughters:

Don’t do it.

Don’t hire your sons-in-law, either.

EDITORIAL

It looks bad, and nobody afterward will feel quite so confident that you are serious about getting your university’s finances in order and protecting important academic programs.

They might look at you, fairly or not, like you’re an old-time Chicago ward boss.

Carlo Montemagno was hired last year as chancellor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He makes $340,000 a year.

That’s a lot of money, but top university talent doesn’t come cheap, not even at a state university that has been forced to cut millions of dollars from its budget in recent years and has considered cutting seven degree programs.

Then, on Sept. 1, 2017, three months after Montemagno came on board, his daughter, Melissa Germain, was hired as assistant director of university communications, with an annual salary of $52,000. One month later, his son-in-law, Jeffrey Germain, was hired as “extra help” in the office of the vice chancellor for research, at $45 an hour.

Allow us to pause here to wonder why Montemagno, no stranger to the back-biting culture of university campuses, failed to foresee that this would become a minor flap. …

It didn’t seem to occur to the members of the Editorial Board that Montemagno had successfully pulled off this feat in Alberta before arriving at SIU. Also, they seem unaware he took a pay cut of over $100,000 ($340,000 USD = $437,996.28 CAD as of March 2, 2018). That’s an awfully big pay cut even if it is in Canadian dollars.

In any event, I wish the folks at SIU all the best and I hope Dr. Montemagno proves to be a successful and effective chancellor. (It doesn’t look good when you hire your family but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong and, as for output from the Ingenuity Lab, everyone has a least one mistake and one failure in their working careers. For good measure, sometimes something that looks like a failure turns out to be a success. However, I think some questions need to be asked.

I offer my thanks to the student reporters at SIU’s The Daily Egyptian , Dawn Rhodes, and the Chicago-Tribune Editorial Board whose investigative reporting and commentary supplied me with enough information to go back and reappraise what I ‘knew’ about the Ingenuity Lab.

As for the Ingenuity Lab, perhaps we’ll hear more about their Carbon transformation programme later this year (2018). Unfortunately, the current webpage does not have substantive updates. There are some videos but they seem more like wistful thinking than real life projects.

To answer my own question, What is happening with Alberta’s (Canada) Ingenuity Lab? The answer would seem to be, not much.

If they are cleaning up a mess and this looks like it might be the case, I hope they’re successful and can move forward with their projects. I would like to hear more about the Ingenuity Lab in the future.

*’Natural Resource Canada’ corrected to ‘Natural Resources Canada’ on April 25, 2018.

From the quantum to the cosmos; an event at Vancouver’s (Canada) Science World

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ARPICO (Society of Italian Researchers & Professionals in Western Canada) sent out an April 9, 2014 announcement,

FROM THE QUANTUM TO THE COSMOS

May 7 [2014] “Unveiling the Universe” lecture registration now open:

Join Science World and TRIUMF on Wednesday, May 7, at Science World at TELUS World of Science in welcoming Professor Edward “Rocky” Kolb, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, for his lecture on how the laws of quantum physics at the tiniest distances relate to structures in the universe at the largest scales. He also will highlight recent spectacular results into the nature of the Big Bang from the orbiting Planck satellite and the South Pole-based BICEP2 telescope.

Doors open at 6:15pm and lecture starts at 7pm. It will be followed by an audience Q&A session.

Tickets are free but registration is required. Details on the registration page (link below)
See http://www.eventbrite.ca/o/unveiling-the-universe-lecture-series-2882137721?s=23658359 for more information.

You can go here to the Science World website for more details and another link for tickets,

Join Science World, TRIUMF and guest speaker Dr Rocky Kolb on Wednesday, May 7 [2014], for another free Unveiling the Universe public lecture about the inner space/outer space connection that may hold the key to understanding the nature of dark matter, dark energy and the mysterious seeds of structure that grew to produce everything we see in the cosmos.

I notice Kolb is associated with the Fermi Lab, which coincidentally is where TRIUMF’s former director, Nigel Lockyer is currently located. You can find out more about Kolb on his personal webpage, where I found this description from his repertoire of talks,

Mysteries of the Dark Universe
Ninety-five percent of the universe is missing! Astronomical observations suggest that most of the mass of the universe is in a mysterious form called dark matter and most of the energy in the universe is in an even more mysterious form called dark energy. Unlocking the secrets of dark matter and dark energy will illuminate the nature of space and time and connect the quantum with the cosmos.

Perhaps this along with the next bit gives you a clearer idea of what Kolb will be discussing. He will also be speaking at TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory of particle and nuclear physics, from the events page,

Wed ,2014-05-07    14:00    Colloquium    Rocky Kolb, Fermilab     Auditorium    The Decade of the WIMP
Abstract:    The bulk of the matter in the present universe is dark. The most attractive possibility for the nature of the dark matter is a new species of elementary particle known as a WIMP (a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle). After a discussion of how a WIMP might fit into models of particle physics, I will review the current situation with respect to direct detection, indirect detection, and collider production of WIMPs. Rapid advances in the field should enable us to answer by the end of the decade whether our universe is dominated by WIMPs.

You may want to get your tickets soon as other lectures in the Unveiling the Universe series have gone quickly.

Shifting winds in the world of particle accelerators: the Fermilab

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I’ve been spending more time with physicists (in my own mind, anyway) than is usual for me.  I’m sure this will pass but while I’m hot (so to speak) on the topic, here’s an item about the Fermilab in the US. From the Feb. 1, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

In this month’s Physics World, reviews and careers editor, Margaret Harris, visits the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) to explore what future projects are in the pipeline now that the Tevatron particle accelerator has closed for good.

After 28 years of ground-breaking discoveries, the Tevatron accelerator has finally surrendered to the mighty Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN [European Laboratory for Particle Physics], placing Fermilab, in some people’s mind, on the brink of disappearing into obscurity.

(I did cover some of the excitement over the Higgs Boson search at the the LHC at CERN in my Dec. 14, 2011 posting.) As for the folks at the Fermilab, they  do have plans (from the news release),

Fermilab can no longer compete with the LHC when it comes to smashing particles together at high energies, but it can look for rare interactions between particles at lower energies. In this type of experiment, the key is not a beam’s energy but its intensity: the number of particles produced per second.

Their plans include two experiments – one already being built and another in the pipeline – that will send beams of neutrinos underground to distant detectors to see how these particles change between one form and another.

More ambitious still is Project X – expected to cost between $1-2bn – which will provide intense beams of protons for experiments on neutrinos, rare decays and heavy nuclei. Outside of high-energy physics, the lab currently participates in experiments into cosmic rays, dark matter and dark energy.

One aspect,  I find particularly interesting about this news release and article is that it makes some of the positioning and jockeying for funds visible to a larger audience than is common in Canadian circles. From the news release,

One obstacle that stands in the way of Fermilab’s progression is money. With the US Congress’s budgetary process – which allocates funds one year at a time – threatening to delay projects, combined with the current economic downturn, there is cause for concern, especially for a lab currently in transition.

The other aspect I find interesting is that while the Fermilab is based in Illinois (US), the article is being published by the UK-based Institute of Physics in their Physics World journal. Is this article part of a larger public relations initiative on behalf of physicists in the UK concerned about their funding? Nassif Ghoussoub at his Piece of Mind blog notes some of the discussion currently taking place in the UK about one of its funding agencies in his Jan. 31, 2012 posting and what is sometimes called ‘basic research’.

The smallness of the Higgs mass (finding the Higgs boson)

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As I noted last week (in my Dec. 6, 2011 posting), there was a big Dec. 13, 2011 announcement from CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) about the Higgs boson. No, they haven’t found it but researchers believe they’ve discovered a hint of where it might be—this ‘hint’ has made international news.

For anyone who may have some questions about what exactly a Higgs boson is, here’s a video of “Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln [describing] the nature of the Higgs boson. Several large experimental groups are hot on the trail of this elusive subatomic particle which is thought to explain the origins of particle mass” (from the YouTube description),

Here’s a little more about why there’s so much excitement, from the Dec. 13, 2011 news item on Science Daily,

The Standard Model is the theory that physicists use to describe the behaviour of fundamental particles [the smallest discrete entities that make up matter and are not made up of smaller constituent bits of matter themselves] and the forces that act between them. It describes the ordinary matter from which we, and everything visible in the Universe, are made extremely well. Nevertheless, the Standard Model does not describe the 96% of the Universe that is invisible. One of the main goals of the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] research programme is to go beyond the Standard Model, and the Higgs boson could be the key.

A Standard Model Higgs boson would confirm a theory first put forward in the 1960s, but there are other possible forms the Higgs boson could take, linked to theories that go beyond the Standard Model. A Standard Model Higgs could still point the way to new physics, through subtleties in its behaviour that would only emerge after studying a large number of Higgs particle decays. A non-Standard Model Higgs, currently beyond the reach of the LHC experiments with data so far recorded, would immediately open the door to new physics, whereas the absence of a Standard Model Higgs would point strongly to new physics at the LHC’s full design energy, set to be achieved after 2014. Whether ATLAS [research group at CERN] and CMS [research group at CERN] show over the coming months that the Standard Model Higgs boson exists or not, the LHC programme is opening the way to new physics.

The search for the Higgs boson has been ongoing for some 40 or 50 years and this announcement points to a definitive answer as to its existence by late 2012.

Two groups at CERN have reported on the results of their search for the Higgs boson. From the Dec. 13, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have nearly eliminated the space in which the Higgs boson could dwell, scientists announced in a seminar held at CERN today. However, the ATLAS and CMS experiments see modest excesses in their data that could soon uncover the famous missing piece of the physics puzzle.

The experiments revealed the latest results as part of their regular report to the CERN Council, which provides oversight for the laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

Theorists have predicted that some subatomic particles gain mass by interacting with other particles called Higgs bosons. The Higgs boson is the only undiscovered part of the Standard Model of physics, which describes the basic building blocks of matter and their interactions.

The experiments’ main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalising hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.

Scientists (Philip Schuster, Natalia Toro, and Andy Haas) at the Dec. 13, 2011 (9:30 am PST) Perimeter Institute webcast (What the Higgs is going on?), which took place a few hours after the CERN announcement, exhibited a lot of excitement liberally spiced with caution in regard to the announcement.  The webcast is available for viewing and if you’re wondering whether it’s suitable for you, here’s a description from the event webpage,

What is everything in the universe made of? What was the universe like billions of years ago?

These are eternal questions that humans have pondered throughout the ages. Today, we are on the verge of potentially making revolutionary breakthroughs in answering them.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is a 27-kilometre long underground experiment located on the Swiss-French border near Geneva. It smashes subatomic particles together at vast speeds in an effort to learn more about the fundamental building blocks that make up everything around you. It is the biggest, most ambitious scientific experiment in human history.

On December 13, the LHC will announce its latest findings in its search for the last undiscovered particle in our current model of subatomic particles. This particle is the near-mythical ‘Higgs Boson’ — the particle thought to be involved in giving other particles their mass.

This educational event, geared towards high school students, teachers and the general public, will follow CERN’s announcement and discuss its findings and their background and implications in clear, accessible language.

You can view the webcast from here. The description of how scientists choose which events to measure and the process they use to define whether or not an event is significant adds to one’s appreciation of the work being done in these projects.

Jon Butterworth, a physicist who works at CERN and whose blog is one of the Guardian science blogs, wrote a limerick about it all in his Dec. 13, 2011 posting,

A physicist saw an enigma
And called to his mum “Flying pig, ma!”
She said “Flying pigs?
Next thing you’ll see the Higgs!”
He said “Nah, not until it’s five sigma!”

Five sigma is a measure of certainty. The current results have a 2.3 sigma, which is promising but the gold standard is five.

Here’s the live blog that Alok Jha, science correspondent for the Guardain, kept during the Dec. 13, 2011 announcement (excerpted from the live blog),

1.01pm: Cern’s live webcast has begun, but the seminar has yet to start. The expressions on some of the faces in the audience suggests Christmas is about to come early for the physics community.

1.02pm: Ok the seminar has started, but traffic to the webcast is obviously heavy, breaking up the transmission.

TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, held a public seminar at 2:30 pm PST (Dec. 13, 2011) on their site at the University of British Columbia. They also have some information on their website about Canadian scientists who are involved in the CERN experiments ( from the Research Highlights page,  Physicists Smell but Don’t Yet Taste Higgs),

In a seminar held at CERN this morning and then repeated across Canada at multiple partnering institutions, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Finding this particle would snap in the last missing puzzle piece of the Standard Model that describes the universe at its most basic level. Tantalizing hints have been seen by both experiments in the same mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery. The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass in the range 115-130 GeV, excluding essentially all other hiding places.

“We are at a crossroads in our understanding of how energy gained mass and became matter in the early universe,” said Rob McPherson, spokesperson of the Canadian team working on the ATLAS project and a professor at the University of Victoria and a research scientist with the Institute of Particle Physics. “If these hints lead to a firm discovery over the coming year, we will be at the start of our investigation of the interactions that lie behind our current theories. If they are not confirmed, we will have to reject our present understanding, throw out our current theories, and start over. It is an extremely interesting time in particle physics.”

So there you have it. They think they observed something but they’re not sure, which makes for a very exciting time (they hope). While I’m not a scientist and cannot fully appreciate this moment, I can remember similar moments in my own work when something seems to be coming into focus. It isn’t my final result but it does hint at what is to come and gives me the resolve (giddy excitement for a few hours or days) I need to continue because a lot of what I do is slogging (I recognize the word play).

On a final note, it seems there was a minor crisis during the presentations in CERN. Lily Asquith, at the Argonne National Laboratory [Chicago, US] writes about it on Jon Butterworth’s blog (Guardian science blogs) in her Dec. 14, 2011 posting,

We have a large windowless meeting room at Argonne with an old-fashioned pull-down projector screen. When I walked in there yesterday morning for the CERN videolink I was greeted by 30-odd ashen-faced physicists. Oh lord, I thought, there has been a terrible accident. …

There stands Fabiola Gianotti [particle physicist in charge of the ATLAS experiment in CERN], our queen, looking fabulous and doing a typically faultless job of presenting a complicated and not-yet-conclusive measurement; taking the work of hundreds of nutty, stressed-out physicists and breathing sense into it.

But I hear only one thing as I walk the corridors of my lab and of the internet:

comic sans [the font Gianotti used for the text in her presentation]

– why‽

…

Do we need to add an additional systematic uncertainty to all our measurements based on this unwise choice of font? Are any of our results still valid? What does this mean for the speed of light?

Please do read the rest of Asquith’s very amusing piece. Who knew physicists are so concerned with fonts?

For the curious, here’s a sample of Comic Sans along with a history excerpt from its Wikipedia essay,

Microsoft designer Vincent Connare says that he began work on Comic Sans in October of 1994. Connare had already created a number of child-oriented fonts for various applications, so when he saw a beta version of Microsoft Bob that used Times New Roman in the word balloons of cartoon characters, he decided to create a new face based on the lettering style of comic books he had in his office, specifically The Dark Knight Returns (lettered by John Costanza) and Watchmen (lettered by Dave Gibbons).

So the font was originally designed for children and comic books, eh?