Coe College to lead multi-university physics research with $1.3 million grant

Coe College will lead universities in Iowa and across the U.S. in research of “high-level physics” with the aid of a seven-figure federal grant.

The Cedar Rapids university announced Thursday in a news release that it received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics to lead collaborative research in partnership with the University of Iowa, California Institute of Technology, University of Notre Dame and more.

According to the release, the “Advanced Calorimetry for High Energy Physics” project being led by Coe will allow undergraduate students to research and develop “next-generation technology for particle physics instrumentation.”

They’ll also be able to work with leading researchers and test their technology at CERN in Geneva, the world’s largest particle physics lab, the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico and particle physics laboratory Fermilab in Illinois.

“This award reinforces Coe’s reputation as a place where undergraduates don’t just learn science — they do science at the highest level,” principal investigator and Coe College associate physics professor James Wetzel said in the release. “It is rare for a college of our size to lead a collaboration with partners like Caltech and CERN. It proves that our students are ready to contribute directly to the global scientific enterprise.”

Coe College will use the grant funding to hire an instrumentation technician to “maintain laboratory equipment and fabricate experimental apparatus,” which will serve to strengthen the college’s research, the release stated.

Also paid for by grant funding will be two annual workshops hosted by Coe and made for high school students, according to the release. The workshops will bring in high schoolers, particularly those from rural areas, to teach them about “high-energy physics instrumentation,” with funding available to assist in travel.

“At Coe, you get the one-on-one mentorship of a close-knit college, but you also get access to the same world-class facilities as the biggest universities,” Coe College Provost Angela Ziskowski said in the release. “Our students are presenting at international conferences, publishing papers and building the actual equipment used to discover how the universe works.”

This story was first published by Iowa Capital Dispatch.