Meet the Collaboration
On the surface, building the IceCube Neutrino Detector seems straightforward. A bunch of people travel to the South Pole, drill holes in the ice, and send sensors down the holes. The reality is that developing and designing the detector was only possible thanks to the contributions of many individuals and institutions.
Collectively, those individuals and institutions are known as the IceCube Collaboration. Currently, the collaboration includes nearly 250 people from 39 institutions in 11 countries. It began in 1999 with the submission of the first IceCube proposal, and many of the original members are still active in the project.
Over the years, the IceCube Collaboration has worked together on every aspect of the detector. Senior scientists, graduate students, technicians, software specialists, drillers, and engineers came together from around the world to build what is now the world’s largest neutrino detector. A remarkable aspect of the construction phase was the wide distribution of the hardware development across the collaboration, from the main boards at Lawrence Berkley National Lab to the construction of tanks and freeze control units for IceTop at the University of Delaware. Production and testing of digital optical modules was done at three assembly facilities in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in Sweden and at DESY in Germany.
Following the completion of construction, the collaboration still meets twice a year to discuss results, analyze data, and discuss future developments. While the logistics (and weekly phone calls!) required to maintain communications within the collaboration may seem cumbersome, the input of a wide variety of people makes for innovation and creativity. Former spokesperson Prof. Tom Gaisser highlighted the benefits of a collaboration, saying, “The advantage of a collaboration is that working together makes it possible to accomplish what would be difficult or impossible for a few individuals or a single institution. In a successful collaboration the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and IceCube has already proved to be an outstandingly successful collaboration.”
While the official IceCube Collaboration is limited to institutions and organizations that participate in the science, IceCube is supported by an even wider group. Construction and operation of IceCube would be possible without support from funding partners like the National Science Foundation (NSF), led by the Office of Polar Programs and the Physics Program, along with funding agencies in Sweden, Belgium, Germany, and other countries.
