The KM3NeT Collaboration

The KM3NeT Collaboration began as a European collaboration, but is now an international collaboration! Each year, new countries are joining us. We are now more than 250 researchers, belonging to 56 institutions and groups. We are located in 41 cities and spread across 17 countries.

In the following, you have a brief description of those members of the KM3NeT collaboration who are involved in the Deep Sea Explorers project.

The Deep Sea Explorers team

UCLouvain team

Gwenhaël de Wasseige (Researcher): Data analysis, Light

I started my journey in neutrino astronomy in the South Pole ice, searching for neutrinos emitted by solar flares with the IceCube Neutrino Telescope. I then moved to water and KM3NeT. My specialty? Searching for low-energy neutrinos leaving a signature in our detectors that look almost like noise. Once you will have helped us to tackle the mysteries of noise with the Deep Sea Explorers project, I will be able to better search for low-energy neutrinos coming from the Sun, but also from black-hole mergers, gamma-ray bursts, or supernovae !

CPPM team

Vincent Bertin (High Energy Physics Researcher): Instrumentation, Positioning calibration, Acoustics

I am a CNRS researcher. After participating in two particle physics experiments at CERN, I have been involved in neutrino detection in the deep sea for the last 25 years, first with the ANTARES neutrino telescope and then with KM3NeT. Thanks to these gigantic detectors, we can do a lot of exciting physics from multi-messenger astronomy to studies of the neutrino fundamental properties, and I have particular interest in the search for the still mysterious Dark Matter. I am also strongly involved in the acoustic positioning systems of the detectors, which we use to reconstruct, in real time, their geometry to within a few centimetres accuracy, and multidisciplinary studies, which are very important to help in the understanding of our detection medium. We warmly thank you for your participation in this project, helping us to characterise backgrounds and the diversity in the deep sea!

Paschal Coyle (High Energy Physics Researcher): Physics and software manager, Spokesperson of KM3NeT

I am a director of research at the Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille. I have been involved in searching for neutrinos with the ANTARES and KM3NeT deep sea neutrino telescopes since 2000. Before that I was involved in accelerator physics at CERN and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre. I have held various management positions both in ANTARES and KM3NeT and am currently the Physics/software manager for KM3NeT and the director of the Laboratoire Sous-Marin Provence Mediterranee. I am very much looking forward to exploring with our citizen science collaborators the bioluminescence and bioacoustic data provided by the KM3NeT observatory.

Carlo Guidi (PhD student): Positioning calibration, Acoustics

I started working on underwater acoustics during my master's thesis, collaborating on the WHALESAFE European project for the detection of sperm whales in the Ligurian Sea. Then I started a PhD with the aim of applying my knowledge of Passive Acoustic Monitoring to the KM3NeT detector, trying to study and trace the presence of marine mammals in the Mediterranean Sea. It would be very useful and interesting if you participated in the Deep Sea Explorers project and thanks to your help it could be possible to refine the detection of cetacean clicks and their recognition.

Feifei Huang (Postdoc researcher): Data analysis, Light
I'm a postdoc researcher at KM3NeT working on the online multi-messenger program since the end of 2018. My Ph.D. work was neutrino oscillations with neutrino detectors in the ice. KM3NeT is a multi-purpose science observatory located in the deep Mediterranean Sea, its main focus is looking for neutrinos - one type of elementary particles that form our universe. The detection principle of KM3NeT is to obtain the direction and energy of the neutrinos coming from the universe, via the optical modules in the sea that observe light emitted by the secondary particles from the neutrino interactions in water. By taking part in this project, you'll be able to help us better understand the data we collect in our optical modules!

APC team

Antoine Kouchner (Researcher): Data analysis

I am Professor at Université de Paris, attached to the Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory (APC), of which I have been the director since 2018. My research activities relate to neutrino telescopes. I have been involved in the field of neutrino astronomy since the late 90s (when I started my PhD), as a member of the ANTARES Collaboration that exploits the data from a detector immersed at 2500m in the Mediterranean Sea, providing the best sensitivity to astrophysical neutrinos over a large part of the Southern sky. I have been in charge of the Energy Calibration of the detector, and the Astrophysics Group. In 2014, I was elected Spokesperson (principal investigator) of the ANTARES Collaboration and reappointed until now. I also participate in the KM3NeT project, successor of ANTARES. I dedicated particular efforts for the feasibility towards the measurement of the neutrino mass hierarchy at low energy (1-20 GeV) through the study of atmospheric neutrinos. Within the framework of the Deep Sea Explorers project, I hope to explore other lines of work related to the environmental conditions in the abyss, namely in terms of light and acoustic noises.

Rémy Le Breton (REINFORCE postdoc): Instrumentation, Calibration, Acoustics

Just after my PhD in cosmology, I moved to neutrino physics within the KM3NeT Collaboration. I have been working in KM3NeT for 3 years now, mainly in the fields of instrumentation and calibration. I am the scientific coordinator of the Calibration Unit, a device we will use to calibrate our detector in time and position. In September 2020, I became a REINFORCE postdoc. Your involvement in the Deep Sea Explorers project is really helpful and much appreciated! Thanks to your insights, we at KM3NeT are going to better understand how our detector is working in these extreme conditions of the deep sea. Thanks!

Véronique Van Elewyck (Researcher):

I am an Assistant Professor at Université de Paris and head of the KM3NeT team at the APC lab. I fell in love with neutrinos when I was a grad student, and since then I have been a neutrino hunter in several large astroparticle physics experiments, such as the Pierre Auger Observatory, ANTARES and KM3NeT. I am also interested in all the different types of science one can do with a neutrino telescope, from probing the composition of the inner Earth, to monitoring the life cycle of the Mediterranean Sea. With the Deep Sea Explorers project I'm looking forward to catching whispers from the dark and facing unexpected encounters !

MIO team

Séverine Martini, (Researcher): bioluminescence
I am a CNRS researcher, in oceanography, working at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO, France). In 2013, my PhD was focusing on biological and oceanographic data from the ANTARES telescope, using time series analysis methods. Since then, I have tried to better understand the diversity of animals that are able to emit light, to bioluminesce and how this trait could impact functioning of the deep ocean. The Deep Sea Explorers project will provide a different way to look at these data.

Christian Tamburini, (Research director): Microbial oceanographer
I am a director of research at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO, France). My main interest is to focus on the dark ocean and the role of microorganisms, including bioluminescent bacteria, in the biological carbon pump. I have been involved in ‘Earth and Sea Sciences’ in the ANTARES collaboration in order to understand the bioluminescence ‘bloom’ occurring sometimes in the deep-sea Mediterranean Sea. I am very curious to involve our collaborators in citizen science on the bioluminescence data provided by the KM3NeT observatory.

Computer Science & Systems Laboratory

Hervé Glotin, (Professor): bioacoustics
Hervé Glotin is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Bioacoustics at LIS CNRS Univ. Toulon. Since 2004 he has defines algorithms for detection, localisation, and life survey by passive acoustics. He currently holds the national Chair of AI for bioacoustics (http://bioacoustics.lis-lab.fr), and is co-PI of the PIA TerraForma on AI and distributed sensors for biodiversity monitoring. He is involved in joint bioacoustical programs in Antares and KM3Net. He has published over 200 papers and is an honorary member of Institut Universitaire de France.