UW–Madison alum and theoretical physicist named WIPAC director

Dan Hooper, PhD, has been selected as the new director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC). Hooper will begin his role at WIPAC on Sept. 9 and as director will report to the Vice Chancellor for Research. Hooper will have a joint faculty appointment with the Department of Physics.

Hooper is a Senior Scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. He also is a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. Hooper earned his Ph.D. in physics from UW–Madison and completed his postdoctoral work at Oxford University.

Hooper’s research focuses on the interface between particle physics and cosmology focused primarily, although not entirely, on studying and exploring particle physics beyond the Standard Model using astrophysics. Areas he has worked on include dark matter, high-energy neutrino astronomy, gamma-ray astronomy and cosmic-rays.

“I’m grateful to Kyle Cranmer, Data Science Institute director, who led the search committee for this internationally recognized leadership position, and to Jim Madsen, senior scientist, for his interim director role at WIPAC,” says Cynthia Czajkowski, interim vice chancellor for research. “Dan’s proven track record of innovation and high-impact research, and his vision for WIPAC, makes him the right person to help lead the next generation of the IceCube project and secure the future of UW–Madison’s world leadership in astroparticle physics.”

WIPAC’s three largest projects center on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which transformed a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice at the South Pole into a detector to search for nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos. These high-energy astronomical messengers provide information to probe the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars.

Under cooperative agreements with the National Science Foundation, WIPAC manages and operates the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and supports the research of the international IceCube Collaboration at more than 50 institutions worldwide. WIPAC also leads the IceCube Upgrade project to add seven more densely instrumented strings of light sensors near the center of the existing array.

The IceCube Upgrade project, scheduled for completion in 2026, will dramatically enhance the low-energy sensitivity of the facility, enabling precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters. It will also serve as a research and development testbed for new devices and provide new measurements of the ice optical properties, thus enhancing analysis precision for new and archived IceCube data.

“I look forward to being part of the incredible science that is being carried out at WIPAC, and am honored to be entrusted with this role,” Hooper says. “I’m fully dedicated to working as hard as I can to ensure the successful implementation of the IceCube Upgrade and IceCube-Gen2.”

WIPAC also plays a significant role in radio detection of neutrinos (Radio Neutrino Observatory-Greenland, Askaran Radio Array), gamma-ray astronomy and astrophysics (High-Altitude Water Cherenkov experiment, Cherenkov Telescope Array) as well as several smaller internally and externally funded projects.

In addition to his research and teaching, Hooper is the author of several books including Dark Cosmos: In Search of our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy (2006), Nature’s Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force (2008) and At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds (2019), and a graduate-level textbook, Particle Cosmology and Astrophysics (2024).

Hooper was active in the Snowmass particle physics community research priority planning exercise and has organized several major international conferences. He is head of the International Advisory Committee for the TeV Particle Astrophysics annual conference series. Since 2020,

Hooper and Shalma Wegsman have hosted the physics podcast Why This Universe? breaking down some of some of the biggest ideas in physics into easily digestible chunks.

By Natasha Kassulke, natasha.kassulke@wisc.edu