5 Questions with Vivek Jain: Unlocking the Mysteries of Neutrinos
ALBANY, N.Y. (Aug. 19, 2026) — Seventy years ago, scientists first detected the neutrino, an elusive elementary particle once thought nearly impossible to observe. Today, researchers are using neutrinos to investigate some of the biggest unanswered questions in physics, from why the universe contains more matter than antimatter to how stars explode.
Vivek Jain, an associate professor of physics at UAlbany, is part of that effort as a member of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE, an international collaboration based at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. Jain studies aspects of DUNE’s Near Detector, which will measure neutrinos before they begin an approximately 800-mile journey through the Earth to detectors deep underground in South Dakota.
Physics students at UAlbany have opportunities to contribute to major international research efforts including DUNE, the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter experiment and experiments at CERN, connecting their work on campus with some of the world’s leading scientific collaborations.
Neutrinos are sometimes called “ghost particles.” What makes them so fascinating?
Neutrinos were proposed in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli as a “desperate remedy” to rescue the bedrock principle of conservation of energy in the subatomic world. He was hesitant to publish his hypothesis because he believed he had done “a terrible thing” by proposing a particle that might never be experimentally detectable. Fortunately, it was found in 1956 — making this year the 70th anniversary of its discovery.
Neutrinos are elementary particles that come in three flavors, associated with the electron and its heavier “cousins,” the muon and tau. They are the second most abundant particle in nature and are produced by stars, supernova explosions, radioactive elements within the Earth and other sources. The Big Bang is by far the largest source of neutrinos in the universe, so understanding their properties deepens our knowledge about the universe.
They also have an unusual property: As they travel, they can change flavor. For example, the sun produces electron neutrinos, but as they travel they can change into muon or tau neutrinos.
Neutrinos are notoriously hard to detect because they interact very weakly with matter. About 10 trillion neutrinos from the sun pass through us every second without interacting.
But that also makes them useful. High-energy light from distant galaxies can be obscured by interstellar dust and gas, whereas neutrinos pass right through. By studying them, we can learn about high-energy processes occurring in very distant parts of the universe.
How will DUNE work, and what do scientists hope to learn?
We will aim a beam of muon neutrinos toward our detectors in South Dakota. The beam is a few meters wide in Illinois but will be a few kilometers wide by the time it arrives in South Dakota.
We already know that some muon neutrinos will turn into electron neutrinos. We want to measure that rate and compare it with the corresponding rate for antineutrinos. If those rates are different, it could help shed light on why the universe appears to contain mainly matter rather than antimatter. The Big Bang produced equal amounts, so what happened to the antimatter remains a mystery.
We can also use changes in neutrino flavor to learn more about their masses and determine their ordering. That is a fundamental question because the ordering affects our understanding of how the universe has evolved since the Big Bang.
There may also be more than three neutrinos, or the neutrinos we already know about could interact in ways we have not yet observed. DUNE gives us an opportunity to look for that new physics as well.
How did you become involved with DUNE and what does UAlbany’s participation mean for students?
I have worked on many particle physics experiments. My last stint was on ATLAS, one of the main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I switched to DUNE because of all the open questions it seeks to answer.
Neutrinos are also “dear to my heart” because my PhD thesis in the 1980s was based on a neutrino experiment at Fermilab.
Students get to interact with scientists from around the world. I’ve had undergraduate students do research with me and present their results at one of DUNE’s physics group meetings, where their work was scrutinized by experts in the field.
It is a novel experience unlike anything they come across in a classroom setting.
How do major international research projects prepare UAlbany students for what comes next?
Most modern particle physics experiments are international, which broadens students’ experiences by exposing them to people and cultures from other countries. One of the first things that strikes U.S. students at CERN, for example, is that grocery stores are not open 24 hours!
There is also a significant technical component. Most experiments collect petabytes of data, and we have developed sophisticated simulation packages and analysis tools to understand what we are observing. Particle physicists have been using machine learning techniques such as neural networks and decision trees for decades.
Graduate students who leave academia after earning their PhD are highly sought after by employers that work with “big data,” including industries such as finance and aerospace.
You work at the cutting edge of science. What is something people might be surprised to learn about you?
Even though my professional life is at the “cutting edge” of science, where we use high-tech equipment and analysis tools, in my personal life I am very “low tech.”
When I read for pleasure, it is always a physical book rather than an e-book. And until about three years ago, I still had an old-style, three-dimensional box TV!