Saturday Morning Physics

The Spring 2027 session begins on Saturday, January 23 and runs through Saturday, April 10. No session will be held on March 27.

All sessions are in person, there is no virtual option. Earning a Certificate of Participation requires in-person attendance at 8 of the first 10 weeks. There are no excused absences for any reason.

Lectures are held in person from 9 a.m. to noon Central Time. All lectures begin promptly at 9:00 a.m. We recommend that you be in your seat by 8:50 a.m. The lectures are two hours long, with a 10-minute break. Tours and Q&A sessions start at about 11:00 a.m., with everything wrapping up at around noon.

Most lectures are held at Fermilab’s Wilson Hall in Batavia Illinois. The Spring 2027 includes three off-site lectures which are at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, University of Chicago, and Northwestern University. Students are responsible for their own transportation. Off-site lecture information will be shared with students closer to the impacted dates.

The Fall 2026 session is in progress. Applications for the fall session are closed and that session is full.

Fall 2026 Schedule

The program is open to high school students in public, private, or parochial schools. Home-schooled students with high school standing are also welcome. Students are expected to attend in person. There is no virtual option.

Gray Putnam, Co-Director

My name is Gray Putnam, I’m a postdoctoral Lederman fellow at Fermilab. My research concerns neutrinos: fundamental, sub-atomic particles that hold the key to learning new fundamental physics beyond our current understanding of the “Standard Model”. Before my role at Fermilab, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where I received my Ph.D. in physics. I’ve been living in and around Chicago for 10 years now. Over that time, I’ve been enthused by the positive role Fermilab plays in the Chicagoland community. I’ve heard so many stories from people who know the lab from a school trip they took as a student, or who have a family member with a connection to the facility. My hope is for Saturday Morning Physics to be a part of our outreach to the community – by educating students both about science broadly, as well as the cutting-edge, fundamental physics research we do at Fermilab.

Christina Wang, Co-Director

Christina Wang received the B.S. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 and Ph.D. degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2024. She is currently a Lederman Fellow at Fermi National Laboratory. Her current research interests include high energy collider physics, axion and dark matter detection, and quantum sensing.