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March 29, 2004
DH-04 TK 026
Contact: Thomas Knox
(310) 243-3367
Email: tknox@csudh.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Advisory

National Science Foundation Awards $295,000 Grant
to California State University, Dominguez Hills for Neutrino Research

CARSON, Calif. – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $295,000 grant to the Physics Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) to fund continued Particle Physics research on Super-Kamiokande and new accelerator-based experiments on neutrino physics.

This three-year grant positions CSU Dominguez Hills in the arena of other well-known research institutions. While renowned as an institution that graduates high numbers of credentialed teachers CSUDH is increasing its reputation as a university of advanced research in science and biomedicine.

“This grant is important for several reasons,” said Kenneth Ganezer, Ph.D., professor of physics and principal investigator responsible for writing and administering the NSF grant for CSUDH. “We have had NSF funding for particle physics for the past 12 years that has increased monetarily and continuously in scope. The new grant will mean that our efforts will go on for the next three years at an increased amount, close to the same amount that a NSF investigator might receive at research-one schools in highly technical, dynamic and fundamental fields as physics, in particular elementary particles. So this means that we can look upon our faculty and the quality and productivity of our research and researchers as being on par with all other U.S. universities including the University of California system.”

Ganezer said the grant is significant to CSUDH because it enables the university to advance research in efforts to solve some of the mysteries relative to experimental stellar signatures of grand unification including neutrino oscillations and nucleon decay.

“We will pursue precise and detailed measurements on neutrino oscillation parameters and associated phenomena such as time-reversal breaking using the newest particle accelerators and their particle beams,” Ganezer said.

In the January 2003 edition of Discover magazine, the neutrino story, “Neutrino mystery solved,” was deemed the second-most important science story in 2002. For more than 15 years, CSUDH physics professors and students conducted research that contributed to the discovery that neutrinos have mass.

In May 2002, researchers at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario, Canada, proved without question that neutrinos have mass. Physicists had tried to validate this theory for 30 years and experienced varying levels of success. Five years ago, Discover magazine cited similar research that solar neutrinos have mass. The 2002 discovery provided increased significance to this body of research because the results came at a much higher confidence level than before.

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