Michelle J Dolinski

Michelle Dolinski, PhD, has a background in nuclear and particle physics, specializing in experimental neutrino physics. Neutrinos, while difficult to study in the laboratory, may be the key to understanding what lies beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Professor Dolinski is interested in designing and building detectors for the next generation of neutrino experiments, including nEXO and DUNE. nEXO will search for neutrinoless double beta decay of xenon-136. Neutrinoless double beta decay experiments probe physics beyond the Standard Model by searching for an extremely rare nuclear decay. The observation of neutrinoless double beta decay would prove that neutrinos are a new kind of fundamental particle called a Majorana fermion. DUNE is a planned experiment to measure CP-violation in neutrinos, a key ingredient in understanding the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. In addition to research, Professor Dolinski is interested in physics education and outreach.