Not everyone would willingly head north in the middle of winter, but University of Tennessee Associate Professor Tova Holmes and Assistant Professor Larry Lee were happy to go. In January they left Knoxville to spend the year as senior Distinguished Researchers at Fermilab , located about 40 miles west of Chicago.
One of the U.S. Department of Energy’s national laboratories , Fermilab is dedicated to accelerator and particle physics and runs experiments to explain what can’t be observed directly. Most of the matter and energy in the universe are still a mystery. Fermilab scientists build large, complex tools to detect subatomic particles that hold clues about this dark matter and dark energy . Studying the smallest components of the universe also helps physicists understand what holds it together, as well as its history and what its future might be.
This is the sort of physics that intrigues Holmes and Lee. Both are part of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which searches for new particles (and new physics) at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Fermilab is home to the LHC Physics Center (LPC), whose Distinguished Researcher program chose them for its 2026 cohort of three senior scientists.
There are 700 U.S. physicists in the CMS collaboration. To support their research, the LPC develops analyses looking for new physics, runs working groups on various technical challenges, develops core software, and hosts seminar series and workshops.
“The LPC serves as a collaboration hub for all of the U.S. members of the CMS experiment,” Holmes explained. “It also helps bring people physically together to do hardware work centered at Fermilab.”
For her and Lee, that includes work on the CMS outer tracker upgrade. Combined with an inner tracker, the outer tracker recreates the paths of charged particles as they travel through the detector. The LHC will upgrade to high-luminosity by 2030, ratcheting up the number of collisions and data it can produce. The upgrade will put more strain on the detector, so improving the trackers’ capabilities will ensure the CMS can keep up with the demand.
“In addition to that, I’m excited to start thinking concretely not just about how to build this upgraded detector, but how we can fully take advantage of its new capabilities,” Holmes said. “I’d like to bring people together at Fermilab to work on developing a trigger menu (a list of signatures that will be used to select the ~.03% of collisions stored for analysis) that will enable us to target new physics in the coming years.”
In their Distinguished Researcher roles, she and Lee will work on the CMS upgrade, as well as search for new particles and plan for future colliders. Fermilab is the top candidate for a muon collider and Holmes and Lee help lead that effort . Holmes said the laboratory is a great environment for the project, with leadership and a critical mass of talent already in place.
The pair is actively encouraging more interest in this work, especially among up-and-coming physicists. Lee was chosen to give an inspirational talk as part of the Distinguished Researcher program, with an April workshop scheduled on machine learning for muon colliders. UT Physics Graduate Student Adam Vendrasco is working with him at Fermilab, and Postdoctoral Associate Daisy Kalra is there full-time to work with him and Holmes. They plan to host more students this summer for hands-on learning opportunities.
While Holmes and Lee will be at Fermilab 75 percent of the time this year, the balance will be spent with their campus research group to strengthen connections between the university and the national lab, a goal Holmes described as essential.
“Our job will be to help make the LPC the hub that it’s intended to be by bringing our students and postdocs with us and drawing in other users with exciting programming,” she said.