The Fermi Guest Investigator program: Impactful Science and Groundbreaking Results

As an all-sky surveyor, the science impact from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is limited by the number of scientists performing data analysis, and not by the number of objects observed by the spacecraft. To encourage this, the Fermi guest investigator (GI) program supports a variety of scientific inquiries that benefit overall Fermi science. The GI program also provides access to radio, optical, X-ray and VHE gamma-ray data and/or observing time, encouraging and enabling relevant multi-wavelength studies. This approach has allowed for new analyses and ideas to flourish, leading to world-class groundbreaking science and a number of unexpected discoveries. The program has also supported a number of multi-year, multi-wavelength observing programs resulting in a rich variety of publicly available resources. Here we describe the most significant results from the Fermi GI program, including those resulting from both sky-survey and target of opportunity pointed observations. We discuss the public resources the program has supported, both for broad-band data acquisition and for the development of new analysis methods and techniques. Additionally, we consider the ramifications of the existence of long-term multi-wavelength datasets, such as those enabled by the Fermi GI program, for future scientific inquiry.