a conversation with Brooke russell

Brooke Russell is a Chamberlain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lab, and studies neutrino oscillations in support of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. She’s been at the Lab for over a year. Having spent the last 12 years at Princeton University for her undergraduate education and then Yale for her doctorate degree, she is happy to be back in California, where it is warmer. She finds the Lab to be a constructive environment to develop as a scientist.

What is your area of work?

I work on neutrino physics, which is a hot field right now. Neutrino oscillation physics involves the phenomenon in which one type of matter evolves into another type of matter. It is an active subfield of particle physics, and is critical to understanding how the universe evolved. There are many questions in this field, both those that are more defined as well as open-ended questions, so it’s a nice mix.

What big challenge are you hoping to solve with your research in the next 20 years?

The main objective of the experiment I’m working on is to understand why there is this matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe. Neutrinos may be partially responsible for this imbalance. It’s a big question, and the experiment will span multiple decades. We hope that it will help us understand the properties of these fundamental particles, and ultimately shed light on how the universe came to be.

What steps are you taking today to accomplish this vision?

Given this experiment won’t result in data for some time, it’s of utmost importance that we design and construct an experiment that can achieve our objectives. I'm involved in conducting simulation studies to ensure our experimental design is appropriate for the measurements we plan to carry out, as well as in ensuring that the hardware can deliver the data. I’m working on both the design of the experiment and the implementation.

Who would you like to partner with at the Lab to bring this vision to life?

My research group is a close knit one that gets a lot done: I work closely with staff scientists Dan Dwyer, Kam-Biu Luk, Cheng-Ju Lin, Callum Wilkinson, Herbert Steiner, Chamberlain postdoctoral fellow Roberto Soleti, and UC Berkeley graduate student Peter Madigan. It’s a fairly small group compared to the other labs in the DUNE project. We also have significant ties with the Lab’s Engineering Division, for example the ASIC, mechanical, and electrical engineering teams, to test and construct prototypes.

Who from the past, present, or future would you like to collaborate with?

John Bahcall was a famous physicist who pioneered solar neutrino physics in the last century. He made theoretical calculations estimating the flux of neutrinos from the sun. For multiple decades there were discrepancies between his calculations and laboratory measurements. It wasn’t till the last years of the 20th century and early this century that we had the experimental designs to properly conduct this measurement, and he was proven right. I would like to understand how he had the fortitude to stick with what he knew to be right. I would have loved to have coffee with him and his wife Netta, also a physicist, whom I heard speak a few years ago. Understanding the spouse’s perspective would also be interesting; spouses put up with a lot when their physicist partners are engrossed with their work.