Conditions at the lab were called into question in 2021, when Fermilab failed an annual assessment by its overseer, the US Department of Energy (DoE). It received a B grade overall ' a B+ was required to pass ' and earned a C for its handling of the troubled multibillion-dollar Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), the nation's flagship particle-physics project. Last year, the DoE took the unusual step of opening the bidding on the contract to run Fermilab, which since 2007 has been operated by the Fermi Research Alliance (FRA) ' a partnership between the University of Chicago in Illinois and the Universities Research Association, a consortium of 90 mostly-US-based universities. A University of Chicago spokesperson emphasized the university's 'deep and longstanding commitment' to Fermilab, and declined to comment further, but Nature has confirmed that the FRA is reapplying to manage the lab. The FRA is not the only contender. Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), which runs...
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