Prof. Scholberg's broad research interests include experimental elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Her main specific interests are in neutrino physics: she studies neutrino oscillations with the Super-Kamiokande experiment, a giant underground water Cherenkov detector located in a mine in the Japanese Alps. Super-K was constructed to search for proton decay and to study neutrinos from the sun, from cosmic ray collisions in the atmosphere, and from supernovae. On Super-K, Prof. Scholberg's primary involvement is with the atmospheric neutrino data analysis, which in 1998 yielded the first convincing evidence for neutrino oscillation (implying the existence of non-zero neutrino mass).

One of the most important questions that we may be able to answer with neutrino oscillation experiments over the next couple of decades is the question of CP (charge conjugation-parity) violation in neutrinos. It's now well known that processes involving quarks violate CP symmetry; it's suspected that the same is true for leptons (such as neutrinos), but leptonic CP violation is as yet unobserved. We hope that understanding of CP violation, along with knowledge of the other neutrino parameters, may lead to insight into the question of the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. The long-term program neutrino oscillation physics aims to answer these questions.