Laura Baudis arrived at the UZH in August 2007. She is dedicating her research to answer fundamental questions in particle astrophysics and cosmology. Before moving to Zurich, she spent one year as a professor at the RWTH Aachen University, two years as an assistant professor at the University of Florida, and three years at Stanford University.

She is mainly involved in direct searches for particle dark matter with liquid xenon and cryogenic (mK) Ge and Si detectors, and in the search for the neutrinoless double beta decay in 76-Ge. Prior to moving to California, she spent four years at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. In Heidelberg, she was involved in the Heidelberg-Moscow experiment, which had the goal to measure the neutrino mass by detecting a very rare nuclear decay in 76-Ge, and in the Heidelberg Dark Matter Search experiment.

Her other passions are her two children, Nathan and Naima.

Alex is a Research Associate (Oberassistent) in our group. He joined XENON collaboration in January 2007, when he moved to Aachen following his interest in noble gas particle detectors and in dark matter searches, and did his PhD with the XENON100 experiment and succefully defended at the University of Zurich in 2011. Prior to this he had worked at International Sakharov Environmental University and National Academy of Science in Minsk (Belarus), in the fields of nuclear physics, spin chemistry and radioecology.

He is leading working groups of the XENON1T project, currentl responsible for photosensors and detector calibrations (with radioactive and light sources), and is a member of the GERDA collaboration and the DARWIN Consortium. His main reasearch interests are rare-events searches, such as direct and indirect dark matter detection, neutrino physics, photodetection, noble gas technology, Monte Carlo simulations, low-background techniques, and high-purity germanium detectors.

Michelle received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley with a focus on gamma-ray spectroscopy and imaging for nuclear astrophysics and environmental monitoring applications. Her interest in observing and understanding the invisible matter in the universe prompted her to join the XENON group in 2014. Her favourite activities are hiking, swimming, and playing music.

Roman works in our group since June 2016, shortly after obtaining his Ph.D. at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where he worked on Tunka-Rex, an experiment for radio detection of cosmic rays. He is broadly interested in astroparticle physics and currently focuses on rare event searches with Germanium detectors in the framework of the GERDA experiment. Outside of physics, he enjoys playing with his daugther, and, if time permits, does a variety of different sports, like football, climbing and skiing.

Shingo Kazama has joined our XENON group in April 2016 as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow. He studied physics at the University of Tokyo and did his Ph.D thesis in the ATLAS experiment. His main research interests are the direct detection of dark matter and the discovery of supersymmetric particles.

His favorite activities besides physics are chorus and traveling.

Shayne arrived in Zurich in May 2017, after earning his Ph.D. in XENON's Purdue group in December 2016 and spending the first three months of 2017 as XENON's run coordinator at Gran Sasso. His graduate thesis involved the development of novel calibration techniques for liquid xenon detectors as well as the detection of non-standard dark matter and supernova neutrinos. As a post-doctoral researcher, he will continue to search for this elusive dark matter and investigate what solar and galactic sources can teach us about neutrino physics in both XENON and DARWIN. Outside of the lab, Shayne likes to run, hike, travel, and practice martial arts.

Patricia has joined to our group in December 2017. She is one of the new postdocs of the Darwin Collaboration. She studied physics at the University of Granada where she also obtained her PhD. Her thesis was focused on the detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with data of the Pierre Auger Observatory. Besides astroparticles, her main research interests are the experiments with very low background conditions, especially the ones dedicated to the searches of dark matter and neutrinos. In addition she is particularly interested on hardware development for TPCs. Outside work what she likes most is sharing time with her friends, but she also enjoys traveling around and attending to zumba lessons.

Yanina started her PhD with the group in February 2018 as part of the Darwin collaboration. She completed her masters degree at the University of Buenos Aires, during which time she analyzed the charge and light production due to electronic recoils in a dual phase TPC, with data collected during her master thesis in UZH. She is interested in rare event physics including neutrino and the prospects for dark matter detection. Her other academic interests are Computer Science and Information Theory. Besides physics she enjoys hiking and skiing, swimming, music and literature.

Adam started his PhD with the group in September 2016 as part of the XENON collaboration. He completed his masters degree at the University of Cambridge, during which time he was worked with the NNPDF parton distribution function collaboration. He is particularly interested in rare events physics including neutrino and, of course, direct dark matter experiments. Besides physics he enjoys cycling and hiking and skiing in the Alps.

Chiara Capelli studied Physics at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She performed her Master thesis on direct measurement of neutrino mass, working on microwave multiplexing read-out optimization for Transition Edge Sensors. She joined the XENON dark matter search project as a PhD student in August 2016. Her main interests are dark matter, neutrino, low temperature physics and R&D activities. In her free time she likes watching movies, playing martial arts and travelling.

Michael started his PhD in December 2015. He completed his Master degree working in the GERDA Collaboration on the Phase II calibration software and on the development of an Emanation Measurement System. The key issues of modern physics such as the neutrino nature, matter antimatter asymmetry, and dark matter are his main interests. Besides physics, he likes music, sports (water polo, tennis, skiing), literature, and teaching.

Rizalina has joined to our group as a PhD student in July, 2015. During her master research she was actively participating in the software development for the OPERA experiment, with the main focus on track reconstruction algorithms in nuclear emulsion. Rizalina has a strong interest in investigation of fundamental laws in particle physics, discovering neutrinoless double beta decay nature. In her spare time she likes to read books, practice yoga, bike, and do rock climbing.

Francesco Piastra joined our XENON group in March 2012 as PhD student. He studied Pysics at the Universita di Roma 2 and got his degree with a thesis within the VIRGO collaboration. At the Universita di Pisa he did his Masters work on the PLASMONX project for laser-plasma electron acceleration. His main interests in physics are direct dark matter searches and the experimental techniques for detection of rare events and very low signals in general. In the free time he likes swimming, reading history books, travelling around, and exploring new cultures and tracking.

Chloe Ransom studied Physics at the University of Oxford and did her Master's project with the SNO+ group there, working on reconstructing optical scattering positions for the calibration system. She joined our group as a PhD student in September 2016, as part of the GERDA experiment and the Elusives ITN project. She is particularly interested in the possible Majorana nature of the neutrino. Her other interests include cooking, knitting and cycling.

Kevin Thieme studied Physics at ETH Zurich and completed his master's degree with a thesis on symmetries of non-local field theories for Quantum Gravity at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics Potsdam. He joined our group as a PhD student in November 2017 within the context of the project Xenoscope which is aiming for the development of the DARWIN detector. His main interest is the design of instruments to perceive nature's fascinating properties beyond the Standard Model, in particular, those of neutrinos and dark matter in low-background experiments. In his spare time, Kevin enjoys the close contact to nature and technics as a glider pilot.

Julien Wulf studied Physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) and did his Masters thesis within the KATRIN Collaboration. He joined our group as a PhD student in September 2014, being involved in the XENON project. His main interests in physics are direct dark matter searches, solid state and semiconductor physics, computational physics and the physics of particle detectors. In his free time he likes athletics, board games, traveling around and skiing.