Bonnie Fleming

Bonnie T. Fleming is an experimental particle physicist who has held leadership roles in several physics experiments and at Fermilab. Since 2022, she has been Fermilab's chief research officer and deputy director for science and technology. She has also served on the faculty of Yale University and the University of Chicago. Fleming is an expert in neutrino physics and liquid argon time projection chamber detector technology.

Education Fleming received her bachelor's degree in physics from Barnard College in 1993. After working at Brookhaven National Laboratory as a particle beam operator from 1993 until 1996, she attended Columbia University. She received her PhD in physics from Columbia University in 2002.

Career After completing her PhD, Fleming held a postdoctoral position as a Lederman Fellow working on the MiniBooNE neutrino oscillation experiment at Fermilab from 2002 to 2004.

Fleming continued to work on experiments at Fermilab during her time at Yale. She was a member of the LArIAT (Liquid Argon TPC In A Test beam) collaboration; founding spokesperson for the ArgoNeuT Argon Neutrino Test project, which she started in 2006 with support from a National Science Foundation CAREER grant; Fleming also collaborates on Fermilab's Short-Baseline Near Detector, and DUNE, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Fleming played a key role in developing the liquid argon time projection chambers used as detectors for many of these experiments. She helped establish Fermilab's Neutrino Physics Center, and from 2016 to 2018 she served as the lab's deputy chief research officer. and co-chair for the U.S. Department of Energy Basic Research Needs on Instrumentation panel.

In addition to her research and leadership roles, Fleming has also been active in science education and outreach and in supporting women scientists. In 2007, she founded Girls’ Science Investigations, a program that encourages middle school girls in New Haven, Connecticut to cultivate their interest, confidence, and skills in science. Under Fleming's guidance, Yale students organized a Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Yale. television programs such as Wired Science and community television, and radio programs such as Here and Now.

In September 2022, Fleming was named Fermilab's chief research officer and deputy director for science and technology. At the same time, she was also appointed professor in the department of physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. Seton-Elm Ivy Award, Yale University, 2012 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2024