Laura Fields, University of Notre Dame Department of Physics & Astronomy associate professor, received the Presidential Early Career Award.
Fields received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her research studying the properties of neutrinos. She was among the nearly 400 researchers named awardees by President Joe Biden Jan. 14.
Neutrinos are produced in many places in the universe. Fields studies neutrinos that are created using particle accelerators.
“We currently have a surprisingly poor understanding of the number of neutrinos created in accelerator-based neutrino beams,” Fields said in a press release.
Fields received a research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2020 while she was a scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The grant funded work that will help scientists better understand neutrino beams. Fields has continued that work at Notre Dame since 2021.
“The research I proposed was not the most glamorous work; it will not directly answer any of the big outstanding questions about how our universe works,” she said. “But it will help turn our accelerator-based neutrino beams into the precise tools we need to answer some of those questions.”
Fields earned her bachelor’s degree in physics and math from the University of Arkansas. She earned a certificate of advanced study in mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Her master’s and doctorate degrees in physics are from Cornell University.
“We were lucky to recruit Dr. Fields to join our department,” Morten Eskildsen, Department of Physics & Astronomy chair, said. “Laura has, in a short amount of time, been able to revitalize our research in the field of neutrino physics, and I am pleased that she is being recognized with the PECASE.”
President Bill Clinton established the awards in 1996. The awards recognize scientists and engineers who show potential for leadership early in their research careers. This year’s awardees are employed or funded by agencies within the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Transportation and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the intelligence community, NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
