South Dakota Mines hosts 5th Annual Conference on Science at SURF

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – Science, the Legend-200, dark matter, and more science.

Tuesday, South Dakota Mines hosted the 5th Annual Conference on Science at the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

Lectures on science echoed throughout the halls of the Classroom Building at the School of Mines campus.

A mix of undergraduate and graduate students were in attendance to learn about the variety of research and experiments that take place at the SURF underground facility.

“This conference very unique because they bring different researchers from different fields. We don’t always have this kind of conference in other places,” says Mines Physics Assistant Professor Dr. Jingbo Wang.

He added the National Science Foundation awards a conference grant to support young researchers at Mines. Wang says the conference provides students a chance for their work to get noticed.

“They can get in touch in-person with the most interesting, the most compelling researchers in the field. And they have the opportunity to present their own work and make themselves exposed to the wider community,” says Wang.

During lectures, attendees learned about the Legend-200 experiment created by Mines students and faculty.

“That’s an outgrowth of the Majorana demonstrator technology. They needed the world’s purest copper to in order to reduce the backgrounds to see the possibility of seeing a rare nuclear decay,” says SURF Science Director Jaret Heise.

A questions and answers session took place after lectures to provide students a chance to better their understanding of recent progress in underground physics and other fields.

Wang says the conference is a beneficial experience for everyone involved.

“I can see the most advanced developments of the field, and for our students, they can apply the knowledge that they learn from our graduate or end of graduate programming to those presentations,” says Wang.

The Conference on Science at SURF will run through Thursday.

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