Jaret Heise

Dr. Jaret Heise Joined the Sanford Underground Research Facility in 2008 as the Science Director. He graduated with a Ph.D. in particle astrophysics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada in May 2002. His accomplishments include participation in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment at an underground laboratory in Canada, where 1000 metric tons of heavy water and roughly 10,000 light sensors were used to resolve the Solar Neutrino Problem that was first posed by Ray Davis based on results from the Homestake Chlorine Experiment. Incidentally, the SNO experiment was awarded a share of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. Heise went on to hold a postdoctoral position at Los Alamos National Laboratory followed by a leadership role as the SNO Detector Manager based in Sudbury.  

After the decommissioning of the SNO experiment starting in late 2006, Heise was involved in the SNO+ project, the successor experiment to SNO that is now studying low-energy solar neutrinos as well as neutrinoless double-beta decay. Heise is thrilled to be involved with world-leading experiments at SURF that are seeking to answer some of the most fundamental questions of our time in a variety of research disciplines, including understanding the synthesis of atomic elements within stars, probing the nature of dark matter as well as continuing to understand the mysterious neutrino. He has been actively engaged in underground science for 28 years and counting...