Current Research

I am looking for undergraduates, graduates, and postdocs willing to work on the following experiments. If you are interested please contact me ntolich@u.washington.edu

I am currently trying to develop a new geoneutrino experiment to be located in SUSEL. Unlike KamLAND this detector is located in the center of continental crust and is more than 750 km from the nearest nuclear power plant. Nuclear power planets surrounding KamLAND were the largest background to the geoneutrino signal, greatly reducing the sensitivity for detecting geoneutrinos.

I am also working on solar neutrino analysis with SNO.

Biographical Sketch

In 1999 I received my M.Sc. from the University of Auckland working with Prof. Paul Barker. My thesis was a precise measurement of the 14N+p→14O+n threshold, which is an important parameter in determining the first element of the CKM matrix based on superallowed beta decay FT values.

In 2005 I received my Ph.D. from Stanford University working with Prof. Giorgio Gratta on the KamLAND experiment. My thesis was a first measurement of neutrinos originating from the Earth, referred to as geoneutrinos. This work combined with an independent analysis performed by Sanshiro Enomoto was published in Nature and received significant press.

Following my Ph.D. I did a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with Kevin Lesko. I was involved in many aspects of analysis of the NCD data from the SNO experiment, including the extraction of the number of neutrinos observed from the Sun.


Publications

Talks

Colloquia, seminars, and invited talks

Contributed talks

Press

Mentioned or quoted in the press

Geoneutrino result, July 27, 2005

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