Dan Dwyer, the head of the Neutrino Physics Group in Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division, has received the American Physical Society’s (APS) 2023 Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) Instrumentation Early Career Award, bestowed annually to honor exceptional contributions to instrumentation that advances the field of particle physics.

Dwyer received the award for his work on LArPix, a 3D pixelated readout technology that is crucial for the liquid argon time projection chambers at the Near Detector complex at Fermilab, part of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). A key element of this system is a low-power, low-noise custom ASIC with dynamic I/O that is capable of running in liquid argon and has “helped open the field to advanced systems on chips.” The citation goes on to say that “such technologies underpin the modular DUNE ND-LAr near detector, which will need to make precise measurements in a high flux environment with event pileup for the ultimate measurements of neutrino oscillations and CP violation in the neutrino sector.” 

Read more about Dwyer’s development of LArPix, Berkeley Lab’s new 3D pixel tile detection system for DUNE, which was carried out in close collaboration with Carl Grace and the ASIC group in the Engineering Division.

The DPF Instrumentation Award was created in 2015, and previous winners include David Nygren (in 2015) and Steve Holland (in 2016) for work conducted in the Berkeley Lab Physics Division.