See the winning photos in Fermilab's Photowalk
This summer, nearly 50 professional and amateur photographers from the Midwest and beyond were invited behind the scenes at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia.
Cameras in hand, they were granted access to locations on the Fermilab site not usually accessible by the public, and they emerged with photographs that capture the science happening at one of the world's premier particle physics laboratories.
The winning photos from Fermilab's Photowalk were chosen and entered into the international Global Physics Photowalk sponsored by the Interactions collaboration.
The local winning images were selected by a three-member jury and whittled down from 196 submissions. The top images offer a different perspective of visually interesting locations on the Fermilab site.
The winning photo, an overhead shot of a sculpture known as the Mobius Strip, was taken from the 15th floor of Fermilab's Wilson Hall by Ken Wickham of St. Charles.
The second-place photo offers a unique view of the inside of the atrium of Wilson Hall and was taken by Ted Trimble of Elgin. Rounding off the top three is a shot of the pi-shaped poles that bring power to the Fermilab site, snapped by David Berg of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
July's event was the fourth Fermilab Photowalk and the first since 2015.
To see the honorable mention photos, with submissions from Naperville, Elgin, Downers Grove, St. Charles, Aurora and Glen Ellyn, as well as submitters from across the U.S., visit www.fnal.gov/pub/photowalk/winning-images.html.
The Fermilab event is part of the Global Physics Photowalk, organized by the Interactions collaboration and hosted this summer at 17 labs around the world. This year's event featured labs and institutions in Australia, Europe and Asia, as well as four (Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California) in the United States.
The global competition opened Aug. 27 and included a public vote as well as a juried selection. Each laboratory entered its top three images into the global contest, and a public online vote chose the top three, while a panel of expert photographers and scientists chose their three favorites. Voting has closed and the winners will be announced at www.interactions.org/photowalk.
Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, Inc. Visit Fermilab's website at www.fnal.gov and follow on Twitter at @Fermilab.
The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.