Welcome to the Karagiorgi group at Columbia University.
We are an experimental astro/particle physics group interested in advancing the fundamental understanding of Standard Model particles and their interactions, and in searching for new physics beyond the Standard Model. New physics may be accessible through neutrino experiments and the study of rare particle processes, or through the study of rare cosmic signatures such as antimatter or MeV gamma-ray signals. In this quest, our group is devoted to continually exploring applications of novel instrumentation and data processing techniques for earth-based and balloon-borne particle imaging detectors.
Our group includes a number of postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, and undergraduate students. We also frequently collaborate with other faculty and researchers at Columbia, as well as scientists and engineers all over the world through our participation in major international particle physics experiments, based primarily at Fermi U.S. National Accelerator Laboratory.
Recent Highlights
Congratulations to Nupur for her DOE SCGSR award! She will be headed off to SLAC this fall, and under the co-supervision of Dr. Kazu Terao, to work closely with SBND collaborators on optimizing the SPINE reconstruction framework for electron neutrino measurements at SBND, in support of SBN/D oscillation analyses. Nupur was also awarded the DOE SCGSR IRCA, which supports international travel and collaboration with Drs. Cesar Jesus Valls and Ryan Plestid at CERN, this coming fall.
June 24, 2025
Welcome summer 2025 REU students! Our group welcomes Ayden Gertiser from UT Austin to the Summer 2025 REU program at Nevis Labs! Ayden will be working with us on developing the readout monitoring system for the upcoming pGRAMS flight and carrying out sensitivity studies for the first GRAMS science mission.
June 1, 2025
Congratulations to Seokju for his URA Visiting Scholar Award! He will be traveling to Fermilab for the summer to support SBND continuous readout stream commissioning, which aims to record neutrinos from a potential galactic supernova burst.
May 22, 2025
Special MicroBooNE Seminar! PhD student Guanqun Ge’s thesis work on the search for neutrino-induced neutral-current coherent single-photon production in MicroBooNE was presented at a “Wine & Cheese” seminar at Fermilab on Feb. 7! The work has been published here.
February 7, 2025
Welcome summer 2024 REU students! Our group welcomes Sarah Heller from Montana State U., Nick Chlanda from Ursinus College, and Andrea Pellot Jimenez from the U. of Michigan to the Summer 2024 REU program at Nevis Labs! Sarah and Nick will be working with us on searches for new physics and calibration measurements in LArTPC detectors, while Andrea will be working with us on developing the readout system for the upcoming pGRAMS flight.
June 1, 2024
pGRAMS is preparing for launch! Our team was recently awarded funding from NASA in a collaborative effort to launch a prototype flight for the Gamma-Ray and AntiMatter Survey (GRAMS). Read more on this Columbia news article.
May 24, 2025
Congratulations to Ibrahim for being appointed MicroBooNE Oscillations/Low Energy Excess Working Group Convener! This working group is responsible for shepherding MicroBooNE measurements that investigate the yet-unexplained MiniBooNE anomaly.
May 14, 2024
Congratulations to Guanqun on her successful PhD defense on “MicroBooNE investigations on the photon interpretation of the MiniBooNE low energy excess”, including her leading work on MicroBooNE’s first search for excess single-photon production and the world’s first search for neutrino-induced neutral current coherent single-photon production!
April 15, 2024
Congratulations to 2022 Nevis REU student Julia Woodward for being awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!
April 10, 2024
Congratulations to Seokju and Nupur for their URA Visiting Scholars Awards! They will both be traveling to Fermilab for the summer to support SBND commissioning and first physics analyses.
April 4, 2024
Join for the Science-on-Hudson public lecture at Columbia’s Nevis Laboratories on Thursday, March 21, where Ibrahim will be talking about ice fishing for astrophysical neutrinos in Antarctica! For more details, visit the Science-on-Hudson website.
March 19, 2024
Congratulations to Ibrahim for being awarded the 2023 Global Neutrino Network Dissertation Prize for his thesis on “New Physics with PeV Astrophysical Neutrino Beams”!
February 29, 2024
Thank you to Columbia grad students Nupur, Gabe, and Maria for spreading the word on the summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Nevis Labs at the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) last weekend at U. Penn.!
January 25, 2024
SBND TPC readout ready! Our postdoc Daisy Kalra, who has been based at Fermilab as an on-site expert on the SBND TPC warm readout system, together with experts on the TPC cold electronics system, have successfully run the two systems hand-in-hand in their entirety for the very first time! This is a great milestone for Columbia’s Nevis Labs and Brookhaven National Lab, who led the construction of these systems, and for the entire collaboration working to commission SBND!
December 28, 2023
GRAMS selected for NASA APRA funding! Our group will be funded by NASA APRA to construct the LArTPC readout system for the GRAMS prototype balloon flight planned for 2025-26. Find out more about GRAMS here.
September 13, 2023
Welcome new group members! Our group welcomes new first-year PhD students Seokju Chung and Karan Kumar! Seokju and Karan are interested in new physics beyond the Standard Model and in machine learning and will be applying their interests to MicroBooNE and SBN. Seokju holds a prestigious two-year fellowship from the Korean government. Karan holds a competitive Graduate Research Fellowship from the US NSF.
September 1, 2023
Welcome new group member! Our group welcomes new postdoc Akshay Malige! Akshay is interested in instrumentation development in data processing for future-generation LArTPC’s and will be applying his interests to SBND, DUNE and GRAMS.
July 15, 2023
Welcome summer 2023 REU students! Our group welcomes Josiah Dubovi from Pennsylvania Western U. and Sarah Vickers from U. of North Carolina to the Summer 2023 REU program at Nevis Labs! Josiah and Sarah will be working with us on searches for new physics with LArTPC detectors.
June 1, 2023
Congratulations to Nupur on her URA Visiting Scholars Award, on “TPC Commissioning and Searches for Dark Sector Signals with SBND”!
April 3, 2023
Congratulations to Daisy on her newly apponted role as Astro-Particle and Exotic Physics Group Convener for the MicroBooNE Experiment!
March 16, 2023
Apply to the Nevis REU program! Our group will be participating in the 2023 summer REU program at Nevis Labs, and we will be taking on 1-2 students to join our group working on MicroBooNE, SBN, DUNE, or GRAMS. Interested undergraduates should apply before the end of January.
January 27, 2023
Special MicroBooNE Seminar! PhD student Guanqun Ge will present MicroBooNE’s latest results investigating pi-zero production in neutrino neutral-current scattering on argon with MicroBooNE at a “Wine & Cheese” seminar at Fermilab on Nov. 11.
September 30, 2022
Congratulations to Ibrahim on his URA Visiting Scholars Award, on “Data Acquisition System Commissioning for SBND”!
September 30, 2022
Welcome new group members! Our group welcomes new postdoc Ibrahim Safa and new first-year PhD student Nupur Oza! Ibrahim and Nupur are both interested in new physics beyond the Standard Model and in machine learning and will be applying their interests to MicroBooNE, SBN, and DUNE.
September 10, 2022
Welcome summer 2022 REU students! Our group welcomes Julia Woodward from Amherst College and Mihir Shetty from Fordham University to the Summer 2022 REU program at Nevis Labs! Julia and Mihir will be working with us on searches for new physics with LArTPC detectors.
May 18, 2022
New Paper: Our measurement of the neutral-current pi-zero production rate in MicroBooNE, in support of neutral-current single-photon measurements in MicroBooNE, is on the arXiv.
May 18, 2022
Congratulations to Mark on the start of his new appointment as Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Lab!
May 1, 2022
Published Paper: Yeon-jae’s paper on real-time inference with 2D CNNs on FPGAs for high-rate particle imaging detectors has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in AI: Big Data and AI in High Energy Physics; it is also available on the arXiv.
April 12, 2022
Published Paper: Our broad review on deep learning applications in the search for new fundamental physics has been accepted for publication in Nature Reviews Physics; it is also available on the arXiv.
April 10, 2022
Congratulations to Daisy on her URA Visiting Scholars Award, on “A broad milli-charged particle search in the SBN program through a dedicated TPC-based trigger”!
April 1, 2022
Congratulations to Yeon-jae on defending her PhD on “Searching for clues for a matter dominated universe in liquid argon time projection chambers” and her trailblazing work on deep learning and real-time AI applications for liquid argon time projection chambers!
March 30, 2022
PRL Editors’ Suggestion! Our group-led paper on MicroBooNE’s first single-photon search, recently accepted by PRL, has been selected as PRL Editors’ Suggestion!
February 18, 2022
New results from MicroBooNE! MicroBooNE’s first electron search results are finally out! Read about them in Columbia’s Science News article.
October 27, 2021
Special MicroBooNE Seminar! Postdoc Mark Ross-Lonergan will present MicroBooNE’s first results investigating the MiniBooNE anomaly at a special “Wine & Cheese” seminar at Fermilab on Oct. 1.
September 24, 2021