It was the summer of 1984 when Casey Durandet (’89, MS’91, PhD’95) first stepped inside the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. That’s where she saw a soaring four-story particle collider and when her future came into focus.
“I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she says, referring to both the research being conducted at Fermilab — such as the Tevatron project, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at the time — and to physics more broadly.
And thanks to impactful experiences at UW–Madison, Durandet has become an integral link in a chain reaction of providing mentorship and support and encouraging bright futures in science.
Early Discoveries
The daughter of French emigrants, Durandet grew up in Madison eager to figure out how things worked. “I was a curious character, questioning everything, taking things apart, tinkering with everything,” she says.
At UW–Madison, physics was a natural fit. As Durandet pursued a trio of degrees — her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics and a PhD in high energy particle physics — she augmented her studies with summer work at Fermilab in Chicago, where she got hands-on experience and put her critical thinking skills to use.
“At Fermilab, you have to think outside of the box. You have this problem, so you have to build this circuit board or debug this device,” she says. “It showed me I didn’t want to be a theorist; I wanted to be an experimentalist.”
Another breakthrough on Durandet’s path was meeting Albert Erwin, who taught her introductory physics course. When the professor was looking for a few students to help with work on a small collider experiment at Fermilab, she became part of his lab group and found her place on campus.
“Those years at UW were some of the best years of my life,” she says. “I was doing things that I loved, working on experiments and working with like-minded people.”
A Scientific Role Model
Erwin was an experimental high energy particle physicist who dedicated his career to teaching and researching at UW–Madison from 1959 to 2005, and as professor emeritus until his passing in 2011. He conducted experiments at laboratories around the world.
Erwin built much of the apparatus used in his research and was an early adopter of new technologies. He made important contributions to flavor physics — the study of different types of elementary particles and how they change during interactions — including work on Tevatron experiments at Fermilab.
In his own lab, Erwin oversaw PhD students as well as undergraduates, and he served as a mentor to many of them, including Durandet.
“He was a major influence in their lives,” she co-wrote in Erwin’s obituary. “Albert was a man of honesty, integrity and humility. He avoided the spotlight and always followed his curiosity and instincts.”
After Erwin’s estate created a significant endowment to support physics research projects, Durandet made her own gift in Erwin’s name to endow a graduate fund to support female students in particle physics.
Catalyst for Change
Durandet is passionate about increasing diversity in the sciences. She was the sole female graduate student in Erwin’s lab in the early ’90s. Back then, about 12% of physics PhDs were awarded to women; today, it’s around 21%.
Durandet works daily to try to change those numbers as a physics professor at Paradise Valley Community College, part of the Maricopa County College District in Phoenix, where she has taught since 1998.
Like Erwin before her, Durandet uses her teaching style and experiences in physics to inspire students, especially women interested in STEM careers.
“A lot of women want to take my classes,” she says. “I find myself being a role model to them.”
Durandet encourages her students to gain experience outside of the classroom, and some have participated in summer internships at Fermilab, where she spends most of her summers continuing to work in particle physics.
The combination of contributing to research, teaching and mentoring strikes a balance that Durandet finds fulfilling, just as Erwin did throughout his career. And she’s excited to see where her support of physics students at her alma mater will take them.
“If it hadn’t been for Albert, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she says. “I want to pay it forward.”
Potential Energy
As Anna Cooleybeck completes her fifth year as a physics PhD student, she’s been contemplating the broader picture.
“One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is big breakthroughs,” she says. “You know a breakthrough is interesting, but you may not know what it will be used for. It may be an advancement, but you don’t know the implications yet.”
These are fitting thoughts for the most recent recipient of the Albert R. Erwin, Jr. & Casey M. Durandet Award, which supports graduate students working in high energy experimental physics. Durandet established the award in 2011, intending it to impact students, even if she couldn’t predict exactly how.
Cooleybeck used the scholarship to support her time working at Fermilab in Chicago. Securing housing close to the lab allowed her to build connections with fellow students who would talk about their research and experiences after hours.
“It felt good to see that people were interested in the research I’m doing,” she says of receiving the award. “It’s also nice to recognize women in high energy physics.”
Cooleybeck is currently analyzing two experiments that aim a beam of neutrinos from Fermilab to detectors hundreds of kilometers away, studying how the particles change. Analyzing the experiments together will create a more precise understanding of neutrinos.
“No one has simultaneously analyzed data from experiments that look at different parts of the same neutrino beam,” she says. “The joint analysis allows us to explore techniques we can use for future experiments.”
