To the surprise of many scientists, Lia Merminga, director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), stepped down this week as head of the country’s sole dedicated particle physics facility. The 13 January announcement puzzled physicists because Merminga had recently weathered a major shake-up of the lab’s management, the resolution of which specified that she would remain director for the foreseeable future.
“This is strange in so many ways,” says one former Fermilab physicist, who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.
Merminga just survived a 2-year process, finished on 30 September 2024, to replace the contracting organization that manages Fermilab for its owner, the Department of Energy (DOE). The winning bid explicitly stated she would remain director of the lab, a sprawling complex in suburban Chicago with an annual budget of $739 million and more than 2000 staff. Observers say that had DOE wished to, it could have insisted on her removal as a condition for winning the new contract and that the appearance of her name in it signifies she was expected to remain in her post for years to come. Yet Merminga stepped down less than 2 weeks after the new contract went into effect on 1 January.
How did Merminga manage to keep her position when the contractors changed? The answer is that the old and new contractors weren’t that different. The new contractor is Fermi Forward Discovery Group LLC (FermiForward), a consortium led by the University of Chicago (UChicago). The previous contractor was a different consortium also led by UChicago. Merminga would have played a central role in preparing the new bid, the former Fermilab physicist says.
“Now is the time to pass the baton to the FermiForward team to take Fermilab to a new era of scientific discovery and excellence in operations,” Merminga wrote in a message forwarded to Fermilab employees, users, and affiliates by Paul Alivisatos, president of UChicago and chair of the FermiForward board. “Together we have accomplished several things we should all be proud of, including winning the FermiForward contract and ensuring a smooth transition to the new contractor.” Fermilab said Merminga declined to comment further. But her statement says she made her decision “in coordination with” Alivisatos.
In a statement accompanying Merminga’s letter, Alivisatos says, “She expanded and strengthened international partnerships for our flagship projects and played a significant role in [FermiForward] winning the management and operations contract.”
Appointed in April 2022, Merminga inherited a laboratory in flux. Under her predecessor, Nigel Lockyer, the estimated costs of Fermilab’s next great project—an experiment under construction that will shoot particles called neutrinos from the lab to a gigantic subterranean detector in South Dakota—doubled to $3.3 billion. Unhappy with Lockyer’s management, several senior scientists left. And staff and outside scientists complained bitterly when, to improve security, DOE severely limited access to the lab, sometimes leaving employees’ spouses and even invited speakers unable to enter the grounds.
Merminga’s own tenure was also rocky. In July 2024, frustrations among Fermilab staff and users boiled over in a largely anonymous online screed filled with recrimination directed at management. A month later a budget snag forced the lab to furlough many employees for 1 week, and in November, Fermilab laid off 53 people, including some long-tenured scientists. “She lost the locker room a long time ago,” says one Fermilab user who asked to remain nameless to protect relations with the lab.
Also surprising, Merminga is neither retiring nor leaving the lab, as directors of national labs generally do when they step down. Instead, the accelerator physicist will continue to work at Fermilab, which she joined in 2018 to lead a major accelerator project. Young-Kee Kim, a particle physicist at UChicago who was the lab’s deputy director from 2006 to 2013, has been named interim director.
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/chief-u-s-particle-physics-laboratory-suddenly-steps-down
