Dear Colleagues and Friends,
On June 23, it was my pleasure to join Governor Michael Rounds and leaders from across South Dakota at the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) to celebrate the significant accomplishment of reaching the 4850 level. The 4850 level was home to the neutrino detector installed by Dr. Ray Davis in 1965 and significant infrastructure for the Homestake Mine.
For nearly 125 years, the School of Mines has been educating some of the best and brightest students in the nation and preparing them for leadership positions in engineering and science. Just as the School of Mines creates transformational opportunities for our students, we believe the Sanford Underground Laboratory and the DUSEL will create transformational opportunities for South Dakota, the nation, and the international scientific community.
The School of Mines has longstanding connections to the Homestake Mine and now the DUSEL. In 1885, the School of Mines was established to meet the growing research needs of the mining industry led by Homestake. Nearly a decade ago, we helped champion the conversion of the mine into a national laboratory. Today we are collaborating with our colleagues to transform Homestake into a world-class laboratory to further research and discoveries not yet imagined. And thanks to the Davis-Bahcall Scholarship Program, sponsored by 3M and named for Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ray Davis and Dr. John Bahcall, there are increased opportunities for South Dakota students to follow in the footsteps of Drs. Davis and Bahcall and South Dakota native Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics.
We have already seen a glimpse of the economic impact the DUSEL will have on South Dakota. This year the School of Mines received a record amount of research funding-more than $20 million-including more than $5 million related to the DUSEL. Local businesses have already been awarded contracts for work at the DUSEL. It is easy to envision substantial economic impact from the DUSEL activity on our economy through construction projects required to build the facilities at DUSEL and the long-term operations of this expansive facility.
The School of Mines is proud to play a leadership role in the DUSEL, and greatly appreciates the opportunity to partner with many others in this project. We are proud of School of Mines Professor Dr. William Roggenthen for his role as DUSEL co-principal investigator for the National Science Foundation along with Dr. Kevin Lesko from the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
To better support the efforts to establish the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) at Homestake, an office for DUSEL will be established in EE/P 235 for forthcoming new hires.
We look forward to more research, more discoveries, to expanding our knowledge, and to the exceptional opportunities ahead.
Please join me in congratulating the Sanford Underground Laboratory on this major milestone.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Wharton, Ph.D.
President
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