Daniel McKinsey
Ibles Olcina
Postdoc
Hola! I have always been fascinated by the question "What is dark matter?", and my research has invariably gravitated around that topic over the years. I started my work in dark matter searches in Valencia with ANTARES, a neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean sea. Then, I moved to Imperial College London to do my PhD, where I worked with Henrique Araújo in developing statistical tools to characterize dark matter signals with the LZ experiment. I continue to work in dark matter searches in LZ at UC Berkeley, but I have also broaden my research interests towards non dark matter searches (e.g. neutrinoless double beta decay in Xe-136) and R&D for next-generation LXe TPCs (e.g. XeBrA).
Suerfu
Postdoc
Description
"What we see is not always true." Behind the visible world, there is a whole invisible Universe composed of subatomic particles such as neutrinos and dark matter. I am interested in designing and constructing detectors to photograph this invisible world. Presently, I am a postdoctoral researcher working on the LZ experiment and the HeRALD superfluid liquid helium experiment. Prior to coming to the Bay area, I did my Ph.D. with Frank Calaprice at Princeton University, growing the world's purest NaI crystal for dark matter searches. As you might have guessed, I am also an amateur photographer, especially landscape and night photography.
Contact: suerfu <at> berkeley.edu
Junsong Lin
Postdoc
I am a postdoc working on LUX, LZ and superfluid helium detector projects. For LUX, I am working on sub-GeV dark matter search. For LZ, I am working on photoneutron calibration source. For superfluid helium detector, I am working on measuring its scintillation light yield through nuclear recoil. I did my PhD in the University of Oxford, developing cold PMT readout for milli-Kelvin cryogenic experiments.
Vetri Velan
Graduate Student
Hi! I'm a 6th-year PhD student at UC Berkeley in the McKinsey group. I work in liquid xenon physics, as part of the LUX, CoDeX, and NEST colloborations, and in liquid helium physics, as part of the HeRALD experiment and the larger effort to use helium for dark matter detection. I am supported by the Graduate Instrumentation Research Award fellowship, adminstered by Fermilab and funded by the Department of Energy. Before moving to Berkeley, I lived in New Jersey nearly all my life and attended Rutgers University for undergrad.
Andreas Biekert
Graduate Student
I'm currently a 5th year graduate student in the McKinsey group working on LZ, HeRALD, and neutron scattering experiments characterizing the properties of helium-4. When I'm not working hard to discover dark matter, I run an intramural soccer team for physics graduate students at Berkeley. I grew up in Connecticut and came to Cal by way of Pomona College in Southern California.
James Watson
Graduate Student
Description
Ryan Smith
Graduate Student
I'm a 4th year graduate student. Currently, I am active on HeRALD, LZ and LUX. For LZ and LUX, I am particularly interested in searches for multiply interacting dark matter. For HeRALD, I work on superfluid helium scintillation experiments and neutron source development. My research with the McKinsey group began with helping to build IBEX and study PTFE reflectivity in liquid xenon. I also attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, and before that I lived in Phoenix.
Roger Romani
Graduate Student
Roger is a current graduate student in the McKinsey group, where he works on developing the next generation of dark matter detectors. He is primarily focused on low threshold detectors for low mass WIMP and electron recoiling dark matter searches, and currently works on the HeRALD project. Roger previously worked for the SuperCDMS collaboration at Stanford, where he worked on the HVeV prototype detector.
Jose Soria
Graduate Student
I'm a third-year graduate student at UC Berkeley in McKinsey's group working on LZ and XeBrA. For LZ, I have been working on priming the analysis tools that will be used in LZ's dark matter search. With XeBrA, we are studying noble liquids in a high voltage environment, and I'm particularly interested in the relationships between the distribution of breakdowns across electrodes and the current density. I also did my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley.
Yue Wang
Graduate Student
I am passionate about searching for the missing mass in our universe. I am a first-year graduate student in the McKinsey group working on LZ and HeRALD. Before moving to Berkeley, I worked on LZ electronics as an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester with Frank Wolfs. Besides detecting dark matter, I worked at SLAC on laser image background removal and machine learning for particle accelerators. As a pianist and dancer, I enjoy performing works influenced by different cultures. I am currently supported by the 2021 Stuart J. Freedman Memorial Fellowship.
Previous Group members
Postdoctoral Associates and Research Scientists
Ethan Bernard
Experimental Physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Quentin Riffard
Project Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Scott Hertel
Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Kevin O'Sullivan
Data Scientist, Grammarly Inc.
Markus Horn
Research Scientist, Sanford Underground Research Facility
Blair Edwards
Data Technologies Group Leader - Research Staff Member, IBM Research Laboratory, UK
James Nikkel
Research Scientist, Yale University
Kaixuan Ni
Associate Professor, University of California San Diego
Alessandro Curioni
Chief Executive Officer, BAQ
David Wright
Job Title
Richard Hasty
Nuclear Safety Information System Specialist, Illinois Emergency Management Agency
Yun Chang Shin
Research Fellow, Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research. Institute for Basic Science, Korea
Wei Guo
Associate Professor, Florida State University
Alexey Lyashenko
Senior Photodetector Research Scientist, Incom Inc.
Christopher Wahl
Engineer, H3D Inc.
Graduate Students
Lucie Tvrznikova
Sensor Systems Engineer, Waymo
Elizabeth Boulton
Project Manager, NYSERDA
Evan Pease
Senior Data Analyst, Cisco Meraki
Brian Tennyson
System Engineer, MITRE Corp.
Nicole Larsen
AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the US Department of Defense
Wade Rellergert
Senior Research Scientist, Georgia Tech Research Institute
Hugh Lippincott
Assistant Professor, University of California Santa Barbara
Angel Manzur
Senior Software Engineer, Schlumberger Ltd.
Louis Kastens
Technical Consultant, Planet Ecosystems, Inc