Science

Cold science with the IceCube EPSCoR Initiative

SDPB Radio | By Lori Walsh,

Published June 16, 2023 at 2:20 PM CDT

IceCube winter-over scientist Yuya Makino walks to work at the IceCube Lab at the South Pole. This new NSF project, led by South Dakota Mines, uses data from this lab and other detectors with cutting-edge big data techniques to push the very frontiers of astronomy.

This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.

Cold science is happening this summer in South Dakota.

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology is hosting the third annual IceCube EPSCoR Initiative undergraduate summer program.

During this program at Mines, faculty are presenting on some of the mysteries at the frontiers of astrophysics as well as demonstrating the techniques used to perform data analysis.

Thanks to this summer program, this cohort of undergraduate physics researchers will be well-positioned to make seminal contributions to IceCube in the upcoming academic year, and beyond.

Professor Dawn Williams is an astroparticle physicist who specializes in high-energy neutrino detection and very large volume neutrino detector calibration. She is also the Level-2 lead for Calibration and Characterization in the IceCube Upgrade & the Co-Convener of the IceCube Calibration Working Group.

Professor Katherine Rawlins is an astroparticle physicist who specializes in cosmic rays, simulation, data analysis and data quality control. She is also the technical lead of the IceCube Cosmic Ray Working Group.