Elena Aprile
Centennial Professor of Physics
Professor Aprile received the “Laurea” in Physics from the University of Naples, Italy and the PhD in Physics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She was a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard University before joining the faculty of the Columbia Physics Department. She also received a Doctorate of Philosophy “honoris causa” from Stockholm University. Professor Aprile is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She is the 2019 recipient of the Lancelot Berkeley Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Professor Aprile is the Spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter Collaboration. In 2025 she was appointed as Director of the Italian Academy for advanced studies in America. You can access her CV here or via the icon above.
Guillaume Plante
Associate Research Scientist
Guillaume brings two decades of deep experience to the cutting-edge of dark matter research. His Ph.D. work was pivotal in the design, commissioning, and initial results of the XENON100 experiment. He has been a driving force behind critical detector systems, notably serving as the architect of the cryogenics for both the XENON1T and XENONnT experiments. Guillaume also played a crucial role as the Analysis Coordinator for XENON1T's first results and spearheaded the development of the liquid-phase purification system for XENONnT. Currently, he is the Technical Coordinator for XENONnT. His expertise further extends to the DarkSide-20k experiment, where he manages the underground argon cryogenics system.
Michael Murra
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Having spent over three years at the underground laboratory in Italy, Michael was instrumental in the development and operation of the XENON1T and XENONnT experiments. He is a specialist in noble gas purification, bringing a decade of experience from his work on XENON. He's an expert in using cryogenic distillation to remove radioactive krypton and radon from xenon. This process makes XENONnT incredibly pure, with radioactivity levels ten billion times lower than in the human body. Currently, Michael is also involved in the design and construction of a gaseous argon purification system, including a radon removal system, for the DarkSide-20k experiment. Michael's spirit animal is the perpetually perplexed Psyduck, and in his free time, he relentlessly pursues the art of the perfect espresso and is on a never-ending quest for the most satisfying mechanical keyboard.
Pueh Leng Tan
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Pueh is part of the XENON collaboration and we are trying to find dark matter with a bucket of liquid xenon under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. Her daily work involves using a lot of statistics machinery to infer properties about dark matter using data collected by the XENONnT detector. She is currently working on analyses involving solar reflected dark matter and traditional GeV-scale WIMPs. She is also very interested in neutrinos and their properties even if she doesn't get to work with them directly for her daily life. So ping her if you're interested to have a chat/collab on funky stats things/light dark matter searches/solar reflected dark matter/neutrinos!
Marcela Stern
Senior Staff Associate
Marcela Stern is Senior Staff Associate at Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, working in the XENON group since 2011. She received her Electrical Engineering degree in 1982, at the University of Technical Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic. In the XENON group, she participates in the laboratory activities, assisting in the design, construction and testing of the R&D setups. She monitors project budgets and expenditures and plans procurements.
Shenyang Shi
Graduate Student
Shenyang graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai and is a fifth-year graduate student working on search for a varieties of dark matters. He is very good about selecting dark matter signals from all sorts of junks using dark magic. Fascinated by traveling, he spent quite some time discovering Italy while staying there looking after the detector. In his free time, he is a street photographer, and serves as the Columbia gardening club manager, keeping a 100 m2 garden (worth $1 million) on Columbia campus below Pupin hall.
Zihao Xu
Graduate Student
Zihao is on a quest to decode the faint whispers of the universe captured by the XENONnT detector - testing the boundaries of the Standard Model, chasing elusive dark matter, or diving into the fog of solar neutrinos. He also enjoys modeling the detector's responses - once the detector is running smoothly, that's most of what's left to do. In truth, Zihao doesn't limit himself to one scientific passion; if it makes sense and sparks curiosity, he's all in. When he's not wrangling math or physics, you'll probably find him watching anime or battling bosses in video games.
This bio was not generated by AI. At least, not 100%.
Dacheng Xu
Graduate Student
Dacheng has been a member of the XENON collaboration for four years (as of June 2025), with an even longer track record in software development. He currently leads the XENON data reprocessing effort, coordinating input from collaborators and transforming complex, messy data into scientifically meaningful results. With a firm belief in the power of high-performance computing to advance research, he is especially drawn to the intersection of physics and computing. A longtime enthusiast of neutrino physics, Dacheng endured years without observing a single neutrino—until XENONnT detected Solar neutrinos, a milestone moment. Outside of work, he enjoys animation, EDM, and scenic drives to the suburbs, despite a healthy caution toward traffic.
Minghao Liu
Graduate Student
As the youngest graduate student in our group, Minghao Liu brings boundless curiosity to all things in XENON, whether it's theoretical modeling, Python coding, or hardware design. Apart from learning, he has already provided crucial inputs for the XENON analysis, including band fits that tell us what the signals and backgrounds look like, and the event-building efficiency that informs how many events to expect. Although his contributions so far have been software-focused, he's eager to roll up his sleeves for detector commissioning and underground operations. A consummate perfectionist, Minghao applies the same meticulous attention to detail to his favorite pastime, Riichi Mahjong, plotting each tile like a miniature experiment.
George Stouraitis
Research Staff Assistant
George started work with Aprile Group in 2024 following the completion of his undergraduate studies in Physics, working on cryogenic distillation, and hardware and software projects. He is motivated by the pursuit of dark matter and the discovery of the universe's fundamental truths through physics. Outside the lab, he enjoys Greek folk dancing, collecting and learning niche musical instruments, and hikes in upstate NY.
* Over the course of the year, there are also undergraduate or other students that temporarily work and learn in the group – mostly over the summer as part of the REU Program, but also independently.
