Kareem Farrag has spent a lot of his life standing at one fork in the road after another, always with multiple paths to choose from. But instead of choosing one path, he always found himself exploring many options—exhibit A: double majoring in math and physics at the University College London. When it came time to either get his PhD in cosmology or get a Master’s in physics, he decided to do a Master’s at Cambridge University. Then, he saw an ad for an opportunity to work on IceCube. “Oh, neutrinos sound really cool! I thought I should give it a shot,” said Kareem. He recalls being overly excited on the train ride home that day.
“Science is like baking—you combine all these ingredients and techniques to get a finished product.”
Kareem Farrag
For three and a half years, Kareem has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the International Center for Hadron Astrophysics at Chiba University in Japan. Currently, he’s working on two (once again) projects, both as part of the recently deployed IceCube Upgrade: the long optical module (LOM) and the D-Egg. Compared to the LOM prototype that Vedant Basu is working on, Kareem explains that this variant has “two extra photomultiplier tubes facing up and down in a slightly longer glass.” As for the D-Egg, he is interested in late light signals that are 100 to 1000 times longer than what IceCube is searching for.
When he’s not tinkering with modules, you can find him traveling, woodworking, and painting. Kareem also spends a lot of his time honing his baking skills in the kitchen. “Science is like baking—you combine all these ingredients and techniques to get a finished product,” he said. “But nature doesn’t always have the blueprint for us, so we don’t know if it’s going to work or not. That’s the exciting part.”
As an undergraduate student, Kareem remembers hearing that “inside every one of us, there is an old supernova that exploded and emitted all of the incredible minerals that we are made of, in that we are all starlight.” Like the starlight trying to find their way, he encourages aspiring students to be bold and to take steps in “figuring out where it is you’re going.”