Associate Investigators

Kim Mintern-Lane is the Chief Operating Officer of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL). She has also been the Facility and Laboratory Manager of SUPL and prior to that she worked at the Australian Federal Police in the forensics portfolio. Kim works with Centre members with the installation of SABRE South and CELLAR in SUPL as well as outreach projects in Stawell.

Ayse Kizilersu’s PhD in theoretical physics on "Gauge Theory Constraints on the Fermion-Boson Vertex" was completed in the UK at the Centre for Particle Theory (CPT) in Durham University, which later became the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP).

Claudia Tomei is Senior Researcher at INFN - Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (Rome division) and Associate Investigator with CDM. 

Laura Manenti is a Lecturer at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on rare event searches and experiments aimed at detecting dark matter particles

Dr Peter McNamara is an experimental particle physicist.

He was a postdoctoral researcher at the ANU node involved with the CYGNUS and SABRE South collaborations. He is now based at the University of Toronto.

Julia Gonsky is a Panofsky Fellow working on the energy frontier at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She completed her postdoc at Columbia and PhD at Harvard, both on the ATLAS experiment.

Laura Baudis is a professor in the Physics Department of the University of Zurich and Associate Investigator with CDM. She has a long interest in dark matter and neutrino physics and has worked on dark matter detectors and on neutrinoless double beta decay since her days as a PhD student at the University of Heidelberg.

Professor Buchler works at the ANU and has a background in quantum and nano-optics with a focus on atom-light interactions.

Caterina Doglioni is a professor at the University of Manchester and a member of the ATLAS Collaboration at the LHC. 

Professor Chris Power is a theoretical and computational astrophysicist based at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research at the University of Western Australia.

Dr Peter Cox is a particle theorist at the University of Melbourne and an ARC DECRA fellow.

Dominik Koll is a Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications of the Australian National University and a Postdoctoral Researcher in Accelerator Mass Spectrometry and Isotope Research of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf.

Paul Altin completed his PhD in quantum atom optics at ANU in 2012, before taking up an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.

Grace Lawrence’s area of research is direct detection, using simulations to study galaxy-scale dark matter distribution.

Dr Dipan Sengupta is an academic at the at the University of New South Wales working on fundamental theoretical particle physics. He was previously a research associate at the Centre’s Adelaide node.

Victoria Millar is a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE).

Maurizio Toscano is a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at the University of Melbourne.

Jan van Driel is a Professor of Science Education and co-leader of the Mathematics, Science & Technology Education Group in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at the University of Melbourne.

Dr Madeleine Zurowski works in the area of experimental particle physics. She completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne which focused on assessing the response of the SABRE detector to backgrounds and different dark matter models. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Ciaran O’Hare is an ARC DECRA fellow at the University of Sydney. He works on aspects of dark matter particle physics and astrophysics, including direct detection, axions, and dark matter halo models

Dr Ben McAllister is an ARC DECRA fellow working at the Swinburne University node of the Centre.

William Campbell is currently a Research Associate in the Quantum Technologies and Dark Matter Lab at UWA. His PhD thesis, recently submitted is titled ‘Acoustic Resonators for Tests of Fundamental Physics’.

Shanti Krishan’s area of research is direct detection. In particular, she is working on the Slow Controls system for SABRE South.

Shihai contributes to development of high purity crystals for WIMP detectors.

Yong contributes to development of high purity crystals for WIMP detectors.

Zengwei contributes to development of high purity crystals for WIMP detectors.

Dr Zijun (Cindy) Zhao is a postdoctoral research associate at UWA node.at UWA node. Upon completion of her PhD from The University of Sydney in 2020, she got a Deborah Jin Fellowship from EQUS to support her research in Quantum Technologies to Test Fundamental Physics and Search for Dark Matter with CI Prof. Michael Tobar.

Professor Geoffrey Brooks is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology. His background is in Process Metallurgy and he has an international reputation in that field, winning major international awards or his fundamental work in metallurgical processing.

Associate Professor Christine Thong is the Applied Innovation Theme Leader in the Centre’s Outreach and Media Engagement Folio. Christine will establish an Innovation Lab using design-inspired approaches to explore new opportunities for commercial application and societal impact of the Centre’s research.

Christian is from the University of Freiburg and his main research is the physics at hadron colliders.