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Summer at Summit Station

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Category: Department News
Published: Tuesday, September 02 2025 01:40

For most graduate students, research trips primarily mean conferences. For Aishwarya Vijai, it meant a month at Summit Station, Greenland, deep inside the Arctic Circle. Summit Station is located near the apex of the Greenland ice sheet at an elevation of ~10,000 feet above sea level. The station hosts scientists from collaborations around the world to conduct experiments on and with the Greenland ice sheet. One such collaboration is the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G), a next-generation, ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrino detector. RNO-G sends teams of 4-5 people to help build the detector, and this year, these teams included a student from UMD: Aishwarya, a fourth-year graduate student in the physics department. Aishwarya works with Assistant Professor Brian Clark. The team flew to Summit Station via miltary aircrafts called LC-130s from Kangerlussuaq, a small town in Western Greenland. They stayed at Summit Station for a month to do maintenance work and collect data for calibration purposes. 

From Summit Station, the RNO-G detector, which is spread out over multiple locations (“stations”) on the ice sheet, is accessed via snow machines. Primary work done by this year included raising structures like solar panels and wind turbines which are used to power the detector. This involved a lot of shoveling to remove the drifting snow and attaching extensions to the bases of these structures to raise their heights. In addition, the team collected critical data to better understand the detector’s performance. This was achieved by campaigns where antennas were lowered hundreds of feet into the ice sheet. 

Summit Station has a maximum capacity of 40 people and operates 6 days a week with Sundays off. The biggest building on station is the aptly named Big House, a common area for meals, bathrooms, showers and entertainment in the form of books and board games. Food is prepared on station by a chef 6 days a week with leftovers on Sundays. Additional amenities include a gym, a recreational tent with a projector for watching movies, and a sauna. Sleeping accommodations are in the form of fish huts (small hard-sided structures for 1 person), the Flarm and the Caboose (hard-sided structures for 6-8 people). 

Temperatures at Summit Station typically fluctuate around -10 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill, with occasional storms generating wind gusts of up to 50 mph. All people on Summit Station are equipped with winter gear to handle extreme weather. The station is located within the Arctic Circle so the sun doesn’t set in the summer until the beginning of August. The constant sunlight reflecting off the ice sheet leads to a high albedo. Sunglasses are worn outside at almost all times. 

Summit Station and the surrounding ice sheet was an incredible place to visit. The ice sheet is extremely beautiful and vast, appearing almost infinite in size. There are also several cool phenomena that can be observed on the ice sheet, like sun dogs and halos, which are produced when sunlight refracts through the ice crystals in the atmosphere. Sunsets at Summit Station saturate the sky in shades of red and yellow that appear even brighter in contrast to the white surroundings. The community at Summit Station also made the experience incredible, turning a nearly inhospitable place into the place to be for an experience of a lifetime. 

The Greenland ice sheet is one of the only places in the world where a UHE neutrino observatory like RNO-G can be built. The collaboration as a whole looks forward to returning next year and continuing work building the detector and hopefully using it to elevate our understanding of the universe at the highest of energies. 

More About RNO-G

The Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G) is a UHE neutrino telescope located at Summit Station, Greenland. The detector aims to find UHE neutrinos potentially emitted from energetic phenomena in the universe like black hole mergers and supernovas (explosions of stars). The detector is currently under construction and the University of Maryland (UMD) is a major construction site. Currently, the RNO-G group at UMD has built nearly 250 antennas. These antennas are the primary detection unit of RNO-G and aim to find the broadband radio pulse that is produced when UHE neutrinos interact with ice.

The fully completed detector will have 35 stations spaced 1 km apart to create an array. Each station will be equipped with 24 antennas buried in the Greenland Ice Sheet in drilled holes ~100 meters in depth. 8 stations have been built so far.

 

Jacob "Bob" Dorfman, 1937-2025

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Category: Department News
Published: Friday, August 29 2025 01:40

Professor Emeritus Jacob Robert Dorfman died on August 27, 2025. A native of Pittsburgh, Dorfman grew up in Baltimore and received his bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. After three years of post-doctoral research at the Rockefeller University, he was appointed a UMD assistant professor in physics. During his time in College Park, he served as the Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, Dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, returning to teaching and research in 1992. He retired as an emeritus professor in 2005.

Dorfman enjoyed visiting professor appointments at the University of Utrecht, Rockefeller University and The Technion in Haifa, Israel.  He is the author of over one hundred scientific papers and books on statistical thermodynamic and chaos theory. His most recent book, Contemporary Kinetic Theory of Matter, written with Henk van Beijeren and T. R. Kirkpatrick, was published in 2021.

In addition to his scientific work, Dorfman studied art history, specializing in 17th century Dutch art, and continued to serve on thesis committees in recent years.

A memorial service is planned for Sunday, Aug. 31 at 10 a.m. at Temple Micah, 2829 Wisconsin Ave. NW

 

JQI Hosts Quantum Workshop for Science Communicators

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Category: Department News
Published: Tuesday, August 26 2025 01:40

More than two dozen science communicators convened on campus at the University of Maryland (UMD) from July 31 to Aug. 2 for a workshop focused on the fundamentals of quantum science and the subtleties of explaining it.

The workshop, called The Schrödinger Sessions Revisited: Quantum Information Meets Science Communication, was hosted by JQI and supported by a grant from the American Physical Society’s Innovation Fund. It was one of six quantum-focused projects sponsored in honor of 2025 being designated the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ). Workshop participants included science writers, science journalists, science illustrators and authors of children’s books about science, along with several attendees who work on science policy.

“Quantum physics has a reputation for being challenging to understand and explain,” says Chris Cesare, the Director of Communications and Outreach at JQI and the lead organizer of the event. “We wanted to give professional science communicators, who already know how to connect with their own audiences, the confidence to add quantum science into their content and coverage. We were thrilled that APS was willing to support our idea.”

In addition to Cesare, UMD alumni Emily Edwards, an associate research professor at Duke University and an affiliate of Duke Quantum Center, and Chad Orzel, the R. Gordon Gould associate professor of physics and astronomy at Union College, also organized the event.

The workshop featured presentations and panel discussions by UMD experts, alumni and invited outside speakers. The opening day introduced quantum science and its history in the 20th century and pointed to many of its important impacts, from long-established technologies like GPS and MRI machines to more modern applications like quantum computing and quantum sensing. Talks about cosmology and high-energy physics rounded out the day. The second day included sessions about the practice of communicating quantum science and the nuts and bolts of building qubits—the basic units of quantum information that form the information-processing heart of quantum devices. The final half-day of the workshop featured an interactive session on the foundations of quantum physics with a presentation and an open-ended discussion about the philosophical questions that quantum science often invites. Many of the workshop’s sessions were recorded and will be available on YouTube—a chance for anyone to benefit from the insights and expertise shared during the event.

In a post-workshop survey, participants unanimously reported that the workshop left them with a better understanding of q(Credit: Bailey Bedford/JQI)(Credit: Bailey Bedford/JQI)uantum information science and that they felt more confident in their ability to communicate quantum physics. Many attendees expressed their eagerness to attend a follow-up event that would build upon what they learned at the workshop and delve deeper into particular quantum topics.

“Overall, this was a great workshop,” one participant said anonymously in the post-workshop survey. “I went from quantum zero to hero in the span of a few days. I really learned a lot and do appreciate this opportunity.”

The workshop followed nearly a decade after two earlier workshops, also called The Schrödinger Sessions, which brought science fiction writers to campus in 2015 and 2016. Since those earlier events, which Edwards and Orzel also organized, progress and investment in quantum information science have been accelerating at a rapid pace, supercharged by the passage of the National Quantum Initiative Act in the U.S. in 2018.

“It was really fun to celebrate a century of quantum discoveries with such a great group of communicators and content creators,” says Edwards, who also serves on the steering committee for IYQ. “During the workshop speakers talked about the basics and applications, but it is also worth noting that the last century of progress was only possible because governments, industries, and academic institutions decided that investing in fundamental physics would benefit humanity."

Original story: https://jqi.umd.edu/news/jqi-hosts-quantum-workshop-science-communicators

 

GRAD-MAP Students, Mentors ‘Learn From Each Other’

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Category: Department News
Published: Wednesday, August 20 2025 01:34

When a group of University of Maryland graduate students founded GRAD-MAP in 2013, they hoped the summer program would “change the status quo in physics and astronomy” by providing more students with access to research opportunities. Skye Joegriner, Jin Young Kim, Ridmi Madarasinghe, Alanis Alvarado Gierbolini, Joanna Chimalilo and Mojisola Akinwande GRAD-MAP summer scholars Skye Joegriner, Jin Young Kim, Ridmi Madarasinghe, Alanis Alvarado Gierbolini, Joanna Chimalilo and Mojisola Akinwande pose for a photo. Image credit: Mark Sherwood. Skye Joegriner, Jin Young Kim, Ridmi Madarasinghe, Alanis Alvarado Gierbolini, Joanna Chimalilo and Mojisola Akinwande GRAD-MAP summer scholars Skye Joegriner, Jin Young Kim, Ridmi Madarasinghe, Alanis Alvarado Gierbolini, Joanna Chimalilo and Mojisola Akinwande pose for a photo. Image credit: Mark Sherwood.

GRAD-MAP’s summer scholars are undergraduate students at U.S. community colleges and educational institutions where internships in scientific fields might not be offered. Over the course of nine weeks, the scholars conduct research under the guidance of UMD mentors, culminating in a research symposium where they present their findings.

While the program is designed to teach technical skills and show students what a Ph.D. program or research career could look like, GRAD-MAP’s mentors—UMD graduate students, postdocs and faculty members—say the program is mutually beneficial. Some mentors leverage GRAD-MAP to launch ambitious new research projects, while others welcome the opportunity to grow as teachers and project leads.

“One of the best parts of GRAD-MAP is how much we learn from each other,” said Mark Ugalino, a UMD astronomy Ph.D. student and GRAD-MAP mentor and co-lead. “The summer scholars get a real feel for research and life as scientists, while we as graduate leads and mentors gain hands-on experience in managing projects and guiding a team. Our collaboration fosters growth on both sides, which is the heart of GRAD-MAP’s success.”

Read below to see what two mentor-scholar pairs learned from the 2025 GRAD-MAP summer program, which is supported by UMD’s astronomy and physics departments. 

Alanis Alvarado Gierbolini, Alberto Bolatto, Serena Cronin and Keaton Donaghue

As a computer science and engineering student at the University of Puerto Rico, Alanis Alvarado Gierbolini entered the GRAD-MAP program with a firm grasp of coding.

“A lot of the students come in with very little coding,” said Serena Cronin, an astronomy Ph.D. student and Alvarado Gierbolini’s co-mentor. “Alanis is the exception. She’s better at coding than I am.” 

Those technical skills came in handy when Alvarado Gierbolini joined an ambitious new project led by UMD Astronomy Professor Alberto Bolatto, Cronin and Keaton Donaghue, an astronomy Ph.D. student and GRAD-MAP co-mentor. The research team applied a new algorithm to James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imagery to understand the physics that gives rise to shapes in the interstellar medium—the cosmic soup of gas and dust between stars.

By running this algorithm, the research team ended up with a series of fractal dimensions: numbers and potentially patterns that could shed light on the complex shapes that appear in space and the processes, such as star formation, that made them that way.

Alvarado Gierbolini applied this novel method to 70 nearby galaxies and said that the process—which involved debugging and rewriting code—taught her how to overcome obstacles and manage her time more efficiently. While she initially felt timid around faculty members and graduate students, she left the program feeling more confident about academia and her place in it.

“You come here, you see grad students and you think they're these extraordinary beings with an unattainable level of smartness,” Alvarado Gierbolini said, “but then you talk to them and the professors and realize, ‘Wow, that could be me someday.’”

The summer scholars don’t just leave the program with new technical skills. Donaghue noted that they also develop a better sense of whether a future in research is right for them.

“The key takeaway for students is to find that they are capable of succeeding in academia as a professional career,” Donaghue said, “or on the flip side, that it’s OK if they discover it isn’t the right path.”

Ridmi Madarasinghe and Ankita Bera

 As a postdoctoral associate in UMD’s Department of Astronomy, Ankita Bera typically works on projects with longer timelines. Once she learned about GRAD-MAP, she realized it was the perfect opportunity for a short-term research project she had been wanting to start.

"GRAD-MAP is an excellent program to leverage if you have smaller project ideas, and it benefits both mentors and students," Bera said. "Students gain valuable, hands-on research experience, while we, as mentors, benefit from fresh perspectives and new insights along the way."

Over the summer, Bera mentored Ridmi Madarasinghe, who recently earned an associate’s degree from Montgomery College and will attend UMD this fall as an aerospace engineering major. Together, they used JWST data and advanced computational techniques to better understand reionization, an astrophysical process in which radiation from the first stars and galaxies—roughly 200 to 400 million years after the Big Bang—stripped electrons from hydrogen atoms. This transformed the universe from an opaque, neutral state to the transparent cosmos we observe today. 

With a goal of piecing together a timeline of when and how reionization occurred, Madarasinghe learned and applied two parameter inference techniques to a model of reionization, one of which incorporates machine learning methods.

Madarasinghe said GRAD-MAP’s programming not only taught her useful skills but also exposed her to research paths she had never considered. A research lunch chat featuring alum Alyssa Pagan (B.S. ’16, astronomy), who brings JWST images to light as a science visuals developer, was especially eye-opening.

“Being able to hear about the job she is doing and how she got to that position—and hearing it firsthand—was not an experience I would have gotten otherwise,” Madarasinghe said. “Careers like those seem so far off and out of reach, but now they seem a lot more attainable.”

Madarasinghe and Bera plan to continue working together in the fall and hope to publish their results in a journal. For Madarasinghe, she’s excited to see where these experiences will lead her at UMD and beyond.

“This is my first internship, and I feel really lucky to have gotten this experience with GRAD-MAP,” Madarasinghe said. “I also did not expect to have the opportunity to continue this research after the program ends, which is very exciting and opens up a lot of different paths for me.”

Original story: https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/grad-map-students-mentors-learn-each-other

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