South
Dakota Mines will host high school students on April
16 who will participate in the annual international IceCube Masterclass. During
the workshop, the students will get a chance to work with the actual dataset taken
by the international IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole.
South Dakota Mines faculty, alongside
researchers globally, collaborate to merge signals from various detectors in
outer space, aiming to create the most comprehensive understanding of the
universe. Among them, Mines Professor Xinhua Bai, Ph.D.,
and Assistant Professor Matthias Plum, Ph.D.,
are astroparticle physicists leading a distinctive NSF sponsored project with IceCube, leveraging the extensive dataset collected by the
world's largest neutrino observatory. The duo will be co-leading the
Masterclass.
South Dakota Mines hosted the first
IceCube Masterclass in 2018 with a handful of students. Since then, there is a steady interest from more and more high school
students. Sixty-one students
have signed up for the Masterclass this year, 40 of them are from
Stevens High School in Rapid City and 21 from Newcastle
High School in Wyoming. “I’m very
impressed by these motivated students and their curiosity about the science we
do,” Bai said. “The active participation of young students and their science teachers
also inspires us to do better year by year.”
"IceCube Masterclass at South Dakota Mines is a great opportunity
for our students to get a glimpse into the fascinating IceCube project and how
it probes our universe with fundamental particles,” said Zachary Beam, a
science teacher
at Newcastle High School. “It
allows them to interact with professional scientists and engineers, see
applications to computer science and data science, and analyze real data from
the neutrino observatory at the South Pole.
The impact of IceCube Masterclass goes beyond the experiment, by giving
students a chance to learn about many aspects of life and research in
Antarctica."
Besides hands-on practice of examining
neutrinos and cosmic rays, this year students will also be introduced to machine
learning with demonstrations. “We are unlocking the secrets of the universe,
one particle at a time, with new data techniques,” said Plum. “On top of the amazing
science, we hope this year students also get a
taste of how scientists tackle the toughest science questions with the smartest
data techniques.”
“The
IceCube Masterclass hosted by Dr. Bai and Dr. Plum provides an exemplary
opportunity for high school students to learn about the remarkable
underpinnings of the universe. In the processes, they get to see first-hand
what it means to be a research scientist as they are introduced to legitimate
experimental results and the ever-evolving suite of tools humanity uses to
interpret them,” said Andrew W. Smith, Ph.D., a physics teacher at Stevens High
School. “Exposing students to the basics of machine learning is exciting for
students growing up in the data age,” Smith added.
To enhance its
detection power in a broader energy range, scientists are upgrading IceCube and
planning for the second generation of the observatory. New data from them will
support more advanced research in decades to come. The IceCube Upgrade started its first
field season at the South Pole early
this year. “Multi-messenger
astronomy and astrophysics are big science. Its success depends on the
continuous efforts of generations of scientists. More young students actively
participating in events like this will help ensure U.S. leadership in this
exciting field of study,” said Bai.
The IceCube Masterclass runs from 9 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. in room 254 of the
Electrical Engineering and Physics Building on the Mines campus. Working alongside Bai
and Plum this year are IceCube research scientist Larissa Paul and graduate
students Amar Thakuri, Logan Molchany and Alexis Hanson, who will be assisting
students by addressing queries and guiding them in accessing and visualizing
IceCube data throughout the hands-on practice sessions.