Marcin Kuźniak

Marcin Kuźniak serves as a professor at Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Center (AstroCeNT) at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (CAMK) in Warsaw. He is an experimental physicist, leader of the SiPM Systems for Astroparticle and Medical Physics group at AstroCeNT, and member of DEAP-3600, DarkSide-20k and Global Argon Dark Matter collaborations.

In 2009 he completed his Ph.D. supported jointly by Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland) and Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI in Villigen, Switzerland), related to the cold and ultracold neutron experiments (nTRV/BRAND, nEDM@PSI) and resulting from his 3-year research stay at PSI. From 2009 he was employed in Canada at Queen’s University (Kingston) and then Carleton University (Ottawa), focusing on direct search for Dark Matter with a single phase liquid argon detector, DEAP-3600, located 2 km underground at SNOLAB (Sudbury). His analysis leadership guided the effort of the collaboration starting from early simulation studies, through development of the full simulation and analysis package, analysis of the commissioning data, to publication of the first results from DEAP-3600 in 2017. He was also in charge of several key R&D items and detector subsystems, as well as of the science program of the cryogenic facility for R&D on noble liquid detectors at Carleton, and is currently in charge of the light collection system for the DarkSide-20k veto detector.

In July 2019 he returned to Poland as an Assistant Professor (adiunkt) to start and lead a research group at AstroCeNT. Following his habilitation in 2021 he was promoted to Associate Professor.

In 2020 he started the DarkWave project, supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, jointly with APC/CNRS, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and Technical University of Munich.

Prof. Kuźniak is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the conference series LIDINE: LIght Detection In Noble Elements, and host of LIDINE 2022. He played a leadership role in the DEAP collaboration, including: Analysis and Simulation Coordinator (2009-2019), Software Manager, Chair of the Scientific Board, Chair of the Publication Committee, Manager of Light Collection and Wavelength Shifter subsystems in DEAP-3600.

The list of and links to his publications can be found in the NASA ADS database.

Research interests

• direct dark matter searches with noble liquid detectors and related techniques (light and charge collection and detection, wavelength-shifting materials, silicon photomultipliers),
• background mitigation and analysis methods for ultra-low background experiments,
• liquid argon-based neutrino detectors,
• novel materials and technologies for future very large neutrino and dark matter detectors,
• fundamental symmetry violation searches.

Grants / Scientific projects

• “DarkWave: Novel technologies for dark matter search and frontier astroparticle physics experiments” (2020-2023). Funding information: EU Horizon 2020 (Twinning grant, 952480),
• “Development of a new GEM detector concept for dark matter searches and neutrino experiments” (2020-2021). Funding information: MINIATURA project, NCN (2019/03/X/ST2/01560),
• “Optimization of silicon photomultiplier response for dark matter search with liquid argon” (2020-2021). Funding information: Polonium 2020 grant, NAWA (PPN/BFR/2019/1/00041).