Biographical Sketch:
I have 4 passions in my life: The first is my wonderful wife Melissa. The second is my work: what a gift it is to unravel the mysteries of the universe through building extraordinary instruments! The third is physical fitness: I am highly dedicated to powerlifting, bodybuilding, calisthenics, and being vegan. The fourth is competitive speedcubing: I am particularly skilled at solving the 3x3x3, 4x4x4, 5x5x5, and multiple 3x3x3 Rubik’s cubes blindfolded.
Research:
What is the nature of dark matter? I dedicated my Ph.D. to this effort by building the world’s first percent-level xenon-doped dual phase argon time projection chamber (TPC) called CHILLAX (CoHerent Ionization Limit in Liquid Argon and Xenon) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. While CHILLAX was a prototype, a future xenon-doped argon TPC has the potential to search for low-mass Weakly-Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter at thresholds inaccessible to undoped argon. At Yale, I continue the pursuit for dark matter through both a different experimental lens and different theoretical models. Specifically, I aim to construct a large (>100) array of levitated microspheres to search for dark matter that couples to normal matter via a long-range (i.e. much larger than atomic spacings) “fifth force”— a regime inaccessible to detectors sensitive to individual nuclear or electron recoils.
Education:
- Ph.D. Physics, UC Davis, 2026
- M.S. Physics, University of Chicago, 2019
- B.A. Physics and Applied Mathematics, UC Berkeley, 2017
Honors & Awards:
- “Professor Emerita Ling-Lie Chau Prize for Excellence in Graduate Studies,” UC Davis, June 2025
- Best National Laboratory Collaboration, UPR, June 2024
- Laboratory Collaboration, UPR, June 2024
- HEPCAT Fellowship, UC Davis, December 2022
Selected Publications: https://inspirehep.net/authors/3196135
