UW–Madison QuarkNet Center 2015-2016 Annual Report

The QuarkNet efforts at UW–Madison are led by the Wisconsin IceCube Astrophysics Center (WIPAC). Prof. Justin Vandenbroucke (co-PI) and Dr Silvia Bravo (co-PI) work together with several researchers working with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory (DECO).

The QuarkNet program @ WIPAC included two activities this year.

i) IceCube Masterclass at WIPAC, held on March 2 and 9 in Madison. WIPAC led the third edition of the IceCube Masterclasses held at twelve different IceCube institutions in the US and Europe. We also hosted the first Spanish edition of an IceCube MasterClass. In Madison, 55 students from six high schools in the Madison area attended the masterclass.

Budget considerations: there are no budget expenses associated with this activity.

ii) HS student internship to develop data analysis tools for and the iOS app of DECO and citizen science projects based on the Zooniverse platform for IceCube and DECO.  Prof. Justin Vandenbroucke leads the DECO project, an app that turns your cell phone into a cosmic-ray detector. Dr. Sílvia Bravo leads citizen science efforts at WIPAC. We hosted a total of 5 students and workd with one teacher. Two students developed algorithms to automatically classify DECO events, building on efforts started during the HS internship last summer.  A third student continued the developement the iOS version of the DECO app, which is now in beta testing. Finally, two students worked in de desing and development of a DECO and IceCube project on Zooniverse. The Zooniverse efforts are currently continued with the WIPAC HS fall internship.

Budget considerations: students worked during up to 6 weeks with an hourly pay of $7.75 per hour .

We keep working with our QuarkNet teachers, although we did not host any teacher workshop this year.

UW–Madison QuarkNet Center

2015-2016 Budget