Sowjanya Gollapinni (Senior Scientist, Physics Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory)

Abstract: Neutrinos provide a promising window to probe a wide range of fundamental physics phenomena. Neutrino related discoveries in the last two decades indicate that the answer to the most sought-after question of why we live in a matter-dominated universe may be within reach. Although more than a trillion of neutrinos pass unnoticed through our bodies every second, they still remain largely mysterious. These ghostly little particles are notoriously difficult to detect given how reluctant they are to interact with matter and require building immense and exquisitely sensitive detectors. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a next generation neutrino experiment at Fermilab and South Dakota in United States with primary goals of resolving the neutrino mass ordering and measuring the charge-parity violating phase, the indicator of a possible explanation for our matter dominated universe. DUNE will use the promising liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) technology as it presents neutrino interactions with unprecedented detail. After briefly reviewing the current state of neutrino physics and open questions, this talk will describe the DUNE experiment along with the rich physics that it offers and its current status.

Dr. Sowjanya Gollapinni is a senior scientist and Neutrino Group Leader in the Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). She earned her Ph.D. from Wayne State University followed by a postdoctoral position at Kansas State University. Before moving to LANL, she was a Faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Gollapinni is an experimental particle physicist, and her current research focuses on studying particles called “neutrinos” and using them as probes to answer fundamental questions in physics. She is a member of several international collaborations such as MicroBooNE, Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). She held several leadership roles across these collaborations including as the Technical Leader of the DUNE Calibration and Cryogenic Instrumentation Consortium, Deputy Coordinator for the DUNE Phase-II program and as the Collaboration Board Chair of MicroBooNE. She is currently the Co-Spokesperson of DUNE. She is an Executive Board member of the American Physics Society’s Department of Particles and Fields (DPF) Coordinating Panel for Advanced Detectors (CPAD). She has been recognized with numerous awards including the prestigious DOE Early Career award, several distinguished performance awards and a Laboratory Fellows’ Prize at LANL.