High energy physicist Peter Winter of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory (CSA CSM) has received a DOE Early Career Award, a prestigious five-year research grant totaling $2.5 million. The grant will help to fund Winter’s contributions to the muon g-2 experiment currently being assembled at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia IL. Winter’s work centers on performing benchmarking tests and calibrations of the nuclear magnetic resonance probes that will be used to precisely measure the magnetic field near the 150-feet-around storage ring magnet. As part of this effort, Winter reused a decommissioned MRI magnet from a hospital in California.

“It is a great honor to receive this Early Career award from DOE,” Winter said. “With this funding, Argonne will become a leader in the measurement of the magnetic field for the g-2 experiment.”

Argonne Associate Laboratory Director Harry Weerts said, “Peter is one of Argonne’s very promising young scientists, and he has already made unique contributions to high energy physics through precise measurements of the decay products of muons.”

Winter has been an assistant physicist at Argonne since 2012. Previously, he held postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Washington and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as one in Germany. He received his PhD in physics from the Research Center of Julich in Germany.

“Peter has a long track record of significant contributions to the measurement of the properties of the muon, going back to his involvement in the muon experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland,” said Argonne High Energy Physics Director Marcel Demarteau. “He is a young scientists with great promise, and his critical contributions to the g-2 experiment will help us give a conclusive answer about a fundamental property of the muon.”