The South Dakota Board of Regents has awarded seven mini-grants, totaling $32,522, to faculty members across the state in support of efforts at the new Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (SUSEL), as they gear up to begin experiments at the 4,850-foot level of the former Homestake Gold Mine at Lead. Several School of Mines researchers received funding. Dr. Stanley Howard, professor, materials and metallurgical engineering, was awarded $5,000 for his project "Recycling of Enriched 76Ge From the Detector Production Circuit." The Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) in Lead will require detectors fabricated from a material called 76Ge. This enriched material is very expensive and amounts lost to solution during the etching of the detectors during manufacture would be between $4 million and $9 million without a plan for recovery. Howard will be developing a process to recover this material.
Dr. Rajesh Sani, assistant professor, chemical and biological engineering, was awarded $5,000 toward his project, "Generating Preliminary Microbial Data on Homestake Gold Mine to Support NSF S4, S5, and Faculty Early Career Development Proposals." This research is focused on collecting preliminary data on microbes present in the deep subsurface of the Homestake Gold Mine. These microbes play important roles in biogeochemical cycling of toxic metals and can have significant impacts in the subsurface environments. The data obtained will support the National Science Foundation's Homestake Mine proposals S4 and S5, as well as, significantly improve current fundamental understanding of metal-microbe interactions in the deep subsurface.
Dr. Sookie Bang, professor, chemical and biological engineering at the School of Mines, and Dr. Cynthia Anderson, associate director, Western South Dakota DNA Core Facility (WestCore)/Center for the Conservation of Biological Resources at Black Hills State University, also received a $5,000 award for their project "Baseline Geomicrobiological Research at the Homestake DUSEL by a Multidisciplinary Research Team Reveals the Need to Conduct a Metagenomic Survey of Eukaryotic Diversity Found in the First Water and Biofilm Samples Taken from Below the Surface." The School of Mines has been collaborating with BHSU on a project to study the diversity of the microbes from the first water and biofilm samples taken from the Ross Shaft at Homestake. This survey will provide information about the risk of biodegradation of materials by fungi, which could prove to be critical to engineers as they choose building materials and assess maintenance costs associated with construction of the underground laboratory facilities.
Dr. Dana J. Medlin, associate professor, materials and metallurgical engineering, received $5,000 for the project "Development of Ultra-Pure Copper for the Underground Germanium Detectors." The processing of ultra-pure copper is required to manufacture the cryostats for very sensitive underground radiation detectors critical to the SUSEL/DUSEL research collaboration. In order to achieve the high purity level needed for the cryostats, the copper needs to be electro-formed in an underground processing facility. Medlin will be concentrating his efforts on successfully implementing an underground electro-forming facility as well as investigating methods to improve the strength of the ultra-pure copper, minimizing the amount needed for the final cryostat design. This will be a collaborative research effort between engineers at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
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