Topic: DUNE - Infrastructure, Milestones, and What's Ahead
DUNE is a next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment and underground neutrino observatory using liquid argon time projection chamber technology. DUNE will measure neutrino and antineutrino oscillations as a function of energy over more than a full oscillation period. It will definitively resolve the neutrino mass ordering, and measure the mixing matrix parameters including the CP violating phase, as well as search for deviations from three-flavor mixing. DUNE is also sensitive to MeV-scale neutrinos, with unique sensitivity to electron neutrinos from the neutronization burst of a supernova, and complementary to other experiments that are predominantly sensitive to electron antineutrinos. DUNE has broad sensitivity to new physics, both from production in the beamline as well as in the cosmos. The excavation project of the far detector site at SURF is complete, and DUNE is on schedule for first physics results in this decade.
This talk will cover the science and status of DUNE, including updated sensitivities with the most recent schedule, as well as results and progress from DUNE prototype detector.
Speaker: Dr. Sunny Seo
Dr. Sunny Seo is a senior scientist at Fermilab, where she works on two pioneering neutrino experiments: the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a flagship international project, and the ICARUS short-baseline neutrino program.
Sunny earned her PhD from the University of Minnesota in 2004, studying subatomic particles (charmonium) in the E835 fixed-target experiment at Fermilab. Since then, she has devoted two decades to experimental neutrino physics, contributing to major international collaborations including IceCube, RENO, Hyper-Kamiokande/T2HKK, NEOS-II, and LSC. Her career has spanned institutions across three continents, including Penn State University, Stockholm University, Seoul National University, and the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea.
Her research explores fundamental questions about the universe through neutrino oscillations, sterile neutrinos, and signals from reactors, the Sun, and supernovae. She also investigates physics beyond the Standard Model and has recently integrated AI and machine learning into her work.
Sunny's contributions to the field have earned international recognition. In 2018, she received the inaugural Woman Scientist Award from the France-Korea Particle Physics Laboratory. She has been a member of the International Neutrino Commission since 2022 and served the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in astroparticle physics from 2017 to 2024, representing South Korea. Most recently, she served on P5 (Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel), which shapes the long-term strategic direction of U.S. particle physics research.
You can register for this talk here.
