Prof. Amy Connolly was awarded a single-PI NSF grant entitled “Precision Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Astrophysics and New Signatures Enabled by a Complete Treatment of Birefringence in Antarctic Ice” for $385k over 3 years.  Connolly identified that birefringent properties of the ice near South Pole could be responsible for unusual behaviors of polarizations of radio-frequency signals observed in in-ice detectors. This award enables Connolly’s group to further characterize birefringence in the South Pole ice using existing cross-disciplinary data at radio frequencies, which will be important for the design of future experiments.  The award also provides first federal funding for the student-led, OSU-based GENETIS project, which uses genetic algorithms to evolve novel detector designs, as well as further support for the ASPIRE workshop for high school women.