Political Quotes

“Madam President, next month Piermaria Oddone will retire as the director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL, after 8 years of service in that position. Pier has led Fermilab through some challenging times, but he has also led the lab to many remarkable achievements. Pier was born in Peru and after earning degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University, he worked at Caltech, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Then in 2005, Pier and his wonderful wife, Barbara, moved to Fermilab, giving up the sunny west coast for cold Chicago winters. They arrived to 6,800-acres of former farmland that Pier and the Fermilab team have worked to restore to its native prairie. The laboratory maintains strong ties with the descendants of the farm families that once worked the land where Fermilab now sits, and every summer the families are invited to a picnic the lab hosts for the community. No other national lab director can boast of barns and a herd of bison. An avid photographer, Pier has spent many weekends walking the lab's grounds trying to capture its natural beauty through the lens. This is one of the things he has loved most about Fermilab. Whether raising bison or maintaining high-tech facilities, Pier has worked diligently to ensure that Fermilab continues to attract some of the best scientists from around the world. And it does.…”