The Bullet Cluster of Galaxies

Dark matter is pivotal to explaining the evolution of our Universe, including the emergence of stars, planets and even life. Representing 85% of the total mass in our Universe, dark matter has never been directly detected on Earth, making it one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our Universe. Current dark matter experiments excite the scientific community, promising one of the most important discoveries of our time. Searches for dark matter have been conducted for more than fifty years and have reached such sophistication that neutrinos emitted by the sun will constitute the “big problem” for all dark matter experiments. After reviewing the evidence of dark matter and the detection challenges, I will present our current effort at the University of Alberta to develop dark matter detectors that are more sensitive to incoming particles because we know that the background neutrinos are coming from the sun. This important research, supported by the National Dorothy Killam Fellowship, represents a critical step toward unravelling the mystery of dark matter and advancing our understanding of our Universe.

Dr. Marie-Cécile Piro

Marie-Cécile Piro is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in the Department of Physics and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Dalhousie University. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Montreal, where she earned her PhD in experimental particle physics for her research on bubble chamber detectors in dark matter searches. Dr. Piro continued her pursuit of dark matter as a postdoctoral associate in France, where she worked with high-purity germanium detectors in a condensed matter group and conducted critical operations at the Modane underground laboratory. She moved to the US as a research associate and spent two years in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy to work on the world’s largest xenon dark matter detector. Her strong leadership and extensive experience in using different detector technologies have allowed her to collaborate with several international research teams and to make significant contributions to world-leading searches for dark matter. In 2024, she was awarded the National Dorothy Killam Fellowship to support her pioneering work in advancing dark matter research.