Hi, I’m Vetri!
I am a postdoctoral researcher and Chamberlain Fellow in the Physics division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. My primary research focus is searching for direct signals of dark matter particles colliding with atomic nuclei. Dark matter makes up 85% of the matter density in our universe—over five times as much as every proton, neutron, and electron combined—but to date, we only understand it at astrophysical scales. The question remains: what is the nature of the dark matter particle?
To answer this, I build and operate some of the world’s most sensitive particle detectors; they are capable of observing individual dark matter interactions. If this is achieved, the particle physics community can study the dark matter particle in more detail to understand how it fits into the larger landscape of particle physics. The vast scale of this open question demands equally vast efforts, so I collaborate with hundreds of scientists on the LUX-ZEPLIN and TESSERACT experiments.
I grew up in Clifton, New Jersey and attended Rutgers University, New Brunswick for undergrad, where I majored in Physics and Chemical Engineering.
Check out my website, where I talk more about my research, as well as my hobbies and interests!