A member of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment has been granted DOE’s Early Career Research Award to support his research in developing technology for a dark-matter detector to be located in the proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. Texas A&M University assistant professor Rupak Mahapatra received $750,000 and was one of just 69 winners chosen out of 1,750 proposals.
Funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has allowed the DOE to allocate $85 million to outstanding young scientists. Mahapatra’s work will be on the Germanium Observatory for Dark Matter or GeoDM, which is an offshoot of CDMS. He is developing the capacity to construct about 300 to 400 10-pound detectors for GeoDM.
“It’s a giant leap in the ability to make these detectors,” Mahapatra said. “At the current rate, it would take more than three centuries. Now it will take about a decade.”
