Embedded Files
Postdocs
Dr. Michael Williams 2024-present. Michael works on everything, and will sleep in his next life.
Dr. Daniel Kodroff 2023-present. Dan works on LZ and QuIPS.
Dr. Vetri Velan 2022--2025. Vetri worked on TESSERACT, and started an APS Congressional Science Fellowship in 2025!
Dr. Shilo Xia 2020--2025. Dr Xia is currently leading our group's efforts to understand the long-term stability of crystalline xenon TPC. She has held key roles in the LZ collaboration including serving as leader of the Calibrations working group, whose efforts are summarized in this recent publication. She started a faculty job at Purdue in 2025.
Dr. Hao Chen 2020-2024. Dr Chen lead our group's effort to study the radon reduction and exclusion ability of a dual-phase crystal/vapor xenon TPC, published in PRD. He also lead the analysis of the LZ photoneutron calibration data. He started a faculty job at Fudan University in early 2024.
Dr. Scott Haselschwardt 2019-2024. Dr Haselschwardt lead our group's effort on the degraded alpha source calibration as a proxy for helium-doped liquid xenon, published in PRL. He has been a key player in the LZ analysis machine, serving as Physics Coordinator for the 2024 results. He is starting a faculty job at U. Michigan in fall 2024.
Dr Alvine Kamaha (U. Albany) 2020. Dr Kamaha worked closely with me as deputy Calibrations Coordinator for LZ, eventually transitioning to replace me as lead Calibrations Coordinator for the experiment. She has since continued to work on LZ calibrations as an Assistant Professor at UCLA.
Dr. Scott Kravitz 2018-2021. Dr Kravitz lead our group's effort on crystalline xenon, eventually mentoring Dr Chen and passing off that role. He lead our first publication on these studies. He also worked closely with Kelsey (see below) on machine learning application to a LUX analysis, and lead LZ analysis efforst in simulations and machine learning. He is now an Assistant Professor at UT Austin.
Graduate Students
[current] Joanna Wuko (UMass) TESSERACT Experiment (SCGSR). Prof Scott Hertel (U Mass) primary advisor.
[current] Samara Steinfeld (UCB) TESSERACT Experiment (D. McKinsey primary advisor / PS co-advising on hardware and analysis)
[current] Will Matava (UCB) TESSERACT Experiment (D. McKinsey primary advisor / PS co-advising on hardware and analysis)
2025 PhD Ryan Gibbons (UCB) LZ Experiment, crystalline xenon TPC (PS primary advisor / D. McKinsey UCB advisor). Ryan recently lead an impromptu investigation into the so-called "flashlight effect" of external crosstalk when using silicon photomultipliers. This work is published in JINST.
2022 PhD Andy Biekert (UCB) design and analysis of a photoneutron source for the LZ Experiment, with application to coherent scattering of solar 8B neutrinos (D. McKinsey primary advisor) [=> data analyst @Splitwise]
2019 PhD Kelsey Oliver-Mallory ``Improving sensitivity to low-mass dark matter in LUX using a novel electrode background mitigation technique'' (K. Lesko primary advisor, D. McKinsey UCB advisor) [=> postdoctoral scholar at Imperial College London]
2018 PhD Kate Kamdin ``A Search for Lightly Ionizing Particles in the LUX Detector and Research and Development For Future Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chambers'' (PS primary advisor / D. McKinsey UCB advisor) [=> scientist @Triple Ring Technologies]
2017 PhD Evan Pease ``Signal yields, energy resolution and recombination fluctuations in liquid xenon'' (D. McKinsey primary advisor) [=> data scientist @Cisco Meraki]
Undergraduate Interns (SULI, BLUR, CCI, RENEW-HEP, URAP or otherwise!)
2026 Andrew Alatorre (fall SULI) Design of a single photon calibration system for superconducting transition edge sensors. silicon, aluminum and tungsten microstructures.
2026 Kaelani Adcock (fall SULI) Simulation of phonon propagation in silicon, aluminum and tungsten microstructures.
2026 Ilem Leisher (SULI) Design of tiny AI for autonomous environmental and background noise measurement and characterization.
2026 Joshua Summers (spring SULI) Design of a calibration system for novel suspended microstructures.
2026 Joseph Rodriguez (spring SULI) Design studies for a novel triggered source of epithermal (10-100 eV) neutrons for calibration of the TESSERACT experiment.
2025 Kaelani Adcock (SULI) Design and characterization of the QuIPS pixel tracking detector and calorimeter for measuring the momentum of outgoing beta particles following nuclear decays.
2025 Anabella Leon (SULI) Study of quantum efficiency of silicon calorimeters for photon detection.
2024 Bahareh Adami Ardestani (RENEW-HEP) Mitigation of vibration-induced electrical noise in TES calorimeters
2024 Leah Douglas (CCI) Investigation of detector material fluorescence -- 2024 Steven Chu Award for Best Research by an Undergraduate Student [link]
2024 Ro'aa Alkhawaja (SULI) Electrothermal feedback calibration of TES calorimeters
2023 Anthony Arata (UCB) Finite-element analysis and electric field modeling
2022 Nana Porter-Honicky (UCB / McNair Scholar) continued - engineering design studies for new R&D [=> PhD candidate @U Michigan]
2021 Nana Porter-Honicky (UCB / URAP) engineering design studies for new R&D
2019 Matthew Forman (UCSC / SULI) calibration of a crystalline xenon TPC [=> PhD candidate @UCI]
2019 Katie Dunne (UCSC / BLUR) instrumentation upgrades for a crystalline xenon TPC [=> PhD candidate @Stockholm University]
2019 Rahul Hingorani (UCLA / SULI) characterization of silicon photomultipliers digitized at 500 MHz [=> PhD candidate @ ]
2017 Stephen Ebert (UCB) electron dynamics near xenon liquid/vapor interface
2016 Eli Mizrachi (UCB post-baccalaureate) slow control instrumentation for xenon TPC [=> PhD candidate @UMD]
2015 Eli Mizrachi (UCB) high voltage delivery to xenon TPCs
2015 Daniel Naim (UCB) high voltage delivery to xenon TPCs [=> PhD candidate @UCD]
2014 Geoff Gaswint (UCB) CCDs for low-background radio-assay
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