Fermilab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory founded in 1967 and located on a 6,800-acre site in Illinois. It builds and operates particle accelerators and detectors to conduct fundamental research in particle physics, with a mission to investigate the basic constituents of matter and probe questions about the origins and structure of the universe - including the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
The laboratory's technical work spans particle physics, accelerator engineering, detector instrumentation, neutrino physics, cosmology-related research, and high-performance scientific computing. Fermilab hosts what it describes as the world's most powerful neutrino beam and combines that capability with large-scale computing infrastructure for experimental data analysis. It leads major international collaborations, including the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). The lab's historic facilities - notably the Main Ring and the Tevatron collider - were the sites of landmark discoveries, including the bottom quark and the top quark.
Women are significantly underrepresented in physics and accelerator science broadly, and Fermilab operates across several technical disciplines where this gap is pronounced:
- Particle and experimental physics
- Accelerator engineering and technology
- Detector development and instrumentation
- High-performance computing and data analysis
- Neutrino physics and cosmology research
Fermilab participates in and leads global scientific collaborations, positioning the work within an international research environment. Its mission is explicitly focused on advancing fundamental human knowledge about the universe.