The IceCube Masterclass

Your first day as a real researcher

The eleventh edition of the IceCube Masterclass program will be held in March/April/May 2024.

The IceCube masterclasses will be held at twenty research institutions in the US, Europe and Asia. We invite our young students—our future scientists—to learn about particle astrophysics by doing real research.

IceCube is an amazing experiment. It is the largest detector ever built, is taking data in the harshest place on Earth, and has observed the highest energy neutrinos ever. Cool, right?

IceCube is a team. A few hundred scientists, with the help of engineers, drillers, IT experts and many other technical staff, have made this project possible. Will you join us?

Participate! You will analyze actual IceCube data: signals from tiny particles, called neutrinos, that have traveled through the Universe over astronomical distances, bringing us information about extreme objects such as black holes or gamma-ray bursts.

What is an IceCube masterclass?

  • An opportunity to get out of school and meet IceCube researchers
  • An opportunity to learn more about our Universe
  • An opportunity to work with international partners

Watch these videos, recorded at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (www.vub.ac.be) during the 2015 edition, to learn more about the masterclass and how much the students liked the experience.

You can participate in an IceCube masterclass if:

  • You are a high school student interested in science, and
  • You live near one of the hosting IceCube research centers:
    • Chiang Mai University, Thailand
    • Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Germany
    • Harvard University, US
    • Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany
    • Mercer University, US
    • Michigan State University, US
    • Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark
    • The Ohio State University, US
    • Queen’s University
    • RWTH Aachen University, Germany
    • South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, US
    • UCLouvain, Belgium
    • Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) / Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
    • University of Delaware, US
    • University of Maryland, US
    • University of Rochester, US
    • University of Utah, US
    • Stockholm University, Sweden
    • WIPAC at University of Wisconsin–Madison, US

The IceCube Masterclass program is inspired by the International Masterclasses program, started in 2005 by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group and supported in the USA by QuarkNet.