Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC)

Job Description

The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, or WIPAC, is a scientific center within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with researchers based in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy. Until December of 2011, WIPAC was known as the IceCube Research Center. Following construction completion of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the mission, vision, and name of the center were revised to reflect the shift from IceCube construction to data analysis and to encompass a broader range of particle astrophysics research interests. Currently, WIPAC faculty and students are involved in IceCube, the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA), the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) experiment, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) and DM-Ice. Within the field of particle astrophysics, our focus is on neutrino astronomy.

Main goals of the center still revolve around IceCube: maintaining and operating the detector to maximize data output and supporting the international collaboration in meaningful ways. Other priorities include recruiting and developing gifted researchers, developing a national education and outreach program, and contributing to the field of particle astrophysics.

Besides a dedication to research in particle astrophysics, WIPAC is focused on developing and producing innovative instrumentation for current and future projects. We work closely with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Physical Sciences Laboratory on the design and production of electronics and hardware.

Thanks to our involvement in a variety of projects, we have many partners throughout the world. Visit our partners page for information about our collaborations.

At WIPAC, research focuses on particle astrophysics, which uses neutrinos, cosmic rays, and gamma rays to explore the extreme universe. Very powerful processes dominate the cosmos at energies above TeV, where particles are accelerated to energy levels much higher than those achievable with ground-based accelerators. This is what scientists call the nonthermal universe.

Astroparticle physicists use these naturally accelerated particles to look for an understanding of the mightiest environments in our universe. Although we know little about where and how nature generates the highest energy cosmic rays, photons, and neutrinos, primary suspects include supernovas black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and active galaxies. In this context, the search for dark matter is also of great interest.

WIPAC maintains and operates the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the South Pole, under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. IceCube (link to project page) has been the main experiment that made WIPAC and the University of Wisconsin–Madison a vibrant place for astroparticle physics.

We also lead the effort to develop and construct the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA), also at the South Pole. We are collaborators of the dark matter detector DM-Ice (DM-Ice), the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) in Mexico, and the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), to be built in Chile and the Canary Islands in Spain. Our researchers are also involved in the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the development of future instruments such as the CHIPS (CHerenkov Detectors in Mine Pits) project, which deployed its first prototype detector in a former iron mine in northern Minnesota in August 2015.