In 2019, the U.S. National Science Foundation, together with US institutional and international partners, approved funding of the IceCube Upgrade project, an improvement that would significantly push the scientific capabilities of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory located on the continent of Antarctica.
Seven years later, the IceCube Upgrade has now been successfully deployed, marking the first significant expansion of the Observatory since its completion 15 years ago, and U.S. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) was recently on hand in part to acknowledge the historic benchmark.
The University of Utah’s Department of Physics & Astronomy is a critical collaborator of the Observatory. At the start of the construction of the detector in 2005, current Department Chair Carsten Rott performed detector calibration and verification efforts for the Observatory as a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State University. Faculty member Dennis Soldin who last year was installed as analysis coordinator of the global project during the annual collaboration meeting held in Salt Lake City is responsible for the oversight…