REU Site: Multidisciplinary Underground Science at the Sanford Underground Research Facility

Black Hills State University, Spearfish SD

Investigators

Abstract

Black Hills State University (BHSU) will host a 10-week Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program centered on underground science at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). This program will recruit 6-8 undergraduate students each year to participate in exciting underground research projects as well as professional development, social and outreach activities. Underground science offers possibilities for research across a variety of disciplines including physics, chemistry and biology. Recruitment efforts of the BHSU REU site will be especially focused on American Indian, female and community college students. Some of the most important physics experiments of our time are currently in operation at SURF, searching for dark matter and investigating properties of the neutrino. Students will be offered the opportunity to engage in research related to these experiments by assaying materials for radiopurity measurements, using Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the effect of those materials on detectors and testing the chemical purity of noble gases. Additionally, research at SURF is being carried out in the study of life deep underground, with applications to medicine and astrobiology, in particular in the diversity of microbial environments and in the isolation of novel microbes. Complementary chemistry research will also be performed to determine the local environment in which these microbes live.