My Greatest Accomplishment: Bridging my love of arts and crafts with my passion for particle astrophysics through science communication. Creating pieces for the annual Laurentian University SciArt Exhibition is a way to showcase the amazing work done at SNOLAB (an underground science lab specializing in neutrino and dark matter physics) while tapping into my creative side. Performing publicly funded research means that we are obligated to explain what we do in a way that everyone can understand. Neutrino research can absolutely be made accessible to the public.
How Drexel Helped: I definitely honed my presentation skills during the research week poster sessions, which fostered my love of science communication. Drexel provided so many opportunities to showcase our research to the university community and beyond. I still collaborate with colleagues from my time in graduate school, on physics projects and others. Drexel supported me to attend conferences on the edge of my area of research, where I made many connections to other institutions.
Where I’ll Be in Five Years: SNOLAB is still my dream job! I hope to still be searching for answers to the nature of neutrinos; trying to understand the cosmos from over a mile underground. My fledgling research group will have expanded, and we will be tackling the next generation of questions: How do we build detectors big enough and clean enough to find the small signals we’re looking for?
“If I live to be 100, the change I’d most like to see in the world is…
true equity and diversity in STEM fields. We need many different perspectives and experiences to fully explore and understand our universe. I want my daughter to grow up in a world that has no barriers.” — Erica Caden