Discovering the Questions and Challenges of Neutrino Physics

Participation in the CEU program exposes undergraduate students to the wide variety of fascinating questions being asked and studied in the field of nuclear physics. As an undergraduate I attended three consecutive DNP Fall Meetings through the CEU program, presenting the research I performed during three summers working on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). The opportunities to present my research and hear talks by other people in the field inspired me to continue in neutrino research, working on the same experiment, as a graduate student. I loved learning about the fundamental questions SNO was trying to answer, as well as the day-to-day aspects of the research. Continuing to work on the SNO, I have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects, including detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the Neutral-Current Detection Array data. I have enjoyed the challenges of analyzing the latest solar neutrino data, and the subtleties involved in reaching the few-percent level of accuracy in neutrino experiments.