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Fermilab director will stay on one more year

Fermilab announced Thursday that Director Pier Oddone has decided to retire after eight years at the helm of America’s leading particle physics laboratory.

Oddone will continue to serve as director until July 1, 2013, while a committee appointed by the Fermi Research Alliance, which manages and operates the lab, conducts an international search for his successor.

“Eight years is a long time to be lab director. I think it’s time for the next generation to take over,” the 68-year-old Oddone said. “I have a terrific staff and great people here.”

Oddone was named in 2005 as Fermilab’s fifth director after serving as deputy director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

According to a news release, Oddone led Fermilab during a period of scientific achievement, and laid the foundation for a future of world-leading scientific research at the laboratory. Major discoveries were announced from every aspect of Fermilab’s scientific program, including the experiments at the Tevatron collider, the laboratory’s suite of neutrino experiments and its programs to study dark matter and high-energy cosmic particles.

Oddone said he had hoped to announce his decision earlier this year, but wanted to help guide the lab through a “turbulent time” that included budget cuts and layoffs. He said the lab has transitioned well with the neutrino experiments, he is proud of the lab’s partnership with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and helping discover the Higgs boson particle along with the legacy left by the Tevatron, the lab’s particle accelerator that was shut down earlier this year.

“The Tevatron has been a legendary machine and up to the end it has done extraordinary work,” he said. “We have several experiments under construction. Right now, we have the most intense (neutrino) beams in the whole world.”

After his term is complete, Oddone said he likely will move back to California to write, be an advocate for science and watch grapes grow at his vineyard.

“During Pier’s eight years as director, Fermilab has made remarkable contributions to the world’s understanding of particle physics,” said Robert J. Zimmer, FRA board chairman and president of the University of Chicago. “Pier’s leadership has ensured that Fermilab remains the centerpiece of particle physics research in the United States, and that the laboratory’s facilities and resources are focused on groundbreaking discoveries.”

According to a news release, under Oddone’s direction, Fermilab’s Tevatron experiments zeroed in on the hiding place of the long-sought Higgs boson, discovered a suite of exotic particles and shed new light on the relationship between matter and antimatter.

Fermilab completed significant contributions to the accelerator and CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, opened a remote operations center for the LHC on the Fermilab site, and played a leading role in the analysis of data leading to the July 4 discovery of a new particle likely to be the Higgs boson.

Fermilab’s neutrino experiments made major contributions to the worldwide quest to understand these elusive particles, including the most precise measurements of the transformations of some types of neutrinos.

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