UND Project GRAND Group Abstract

Project GRAND is an array of 64 proportional wire chamber stations, located on the north edge of the Notre Dame campus.  Project GRAND provides insights into the origins of cosmic rays from extraterrestrial sources, and also permits a method of detecting solar events and the ways in which they interact with Earth.  The experiment was originally operated in support of graduate and undergraduate research programs under the direction of Dr. John Poirier, Professor Emeritus of Physics, and was constructed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Maintenance and upkeep of the detector array and its associated hardware and software is on ongoing task that is labor-intensive.  Numerous repairs and upgrades continue to increase the operability of the experiments and reduce the workload required to operate and maintain the experiment.  The project serves as a valuable outreach tool for high school students and teachers to study astrophysics.