UWRF Students to Present at the 2010 CUR Posters on the Hill in Washington DC!!! (UWRF News Release)

Kyle Jero, a physics major at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls who is participating in the IceCube project in Antarctica, has been selected to present his abstract “The Oden Ice Breaker Calibration Cruise: Extending the IceTop Array for Solar Study” at the 2010 Posters on the Hill event April 12 in Washington, D.C.

In addition to Jero, UWRF physics Professor Jim Madsen and UWRF physics major Drew Anderson and UW-Madison engineering major Samantha Jakel, who both also participated in the IceCube project, will be attending. Each participant’s poster contains pages of text, graphs and photographs that will help with the student’s oral presentation of their research to members of Congress. Students will participate in an orientation session as well as field trips to various locations throughout Washington, D.C.

The international IceCube project is a collaborative effort involving 15 U.S. groups collectively with partners from Belgium, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and The United Kingdom.

The IceCube project uses a one cubic kilometer volume of ice in Antarctica to explore the universe using subatomic particles known as neutrinos. Neutrinos are emitted during high-energy events in the universe; and together, project participants are working to better understand these events.

UWRF is one of two undergraduate schools involved with the IceCube project, giving students a chance to participate in cutting-edge research. Some of the University’s major contributions to the project include an initial IceCube detector performance analysis, designing and fabricating sunshades for IceTop tanks, deploying IceTop tanks at the South Pole, and simulating high-energy cosmic rays to study the IceTop detector performance.

Jero is part of the expedition on the Oden Icebreaker that set sail from Sweden to Antarctica on Oct. 29, 2009. He monitored the IceTop tanks from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, to Punta Arenas, Chile. Jero has been updating a blog during his travels.

To read Jero’s blog, as well as the blogs of other IceCube project students and for further information on the projects, visit http://www.uwrf.edu/icecube/welcome.htm.