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

Black Hills State University, Spearfish SD

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole (or in part) under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). 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 six 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 interdisciplinary 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. SURF hosts and performs some of the most important physics experiments of our time, searching for evidence of dark matter and investigating the physics of neutrinos. Students The students will particularly be offered the opportunity to engage in research related to these experiments by assaying materials for radiopurity measurements, helping to characterize the LZ detector 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. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.