Sally Shaw

Biography

Sally Shaw is a postdoctoral researcher and professional dark matter hunter. Originally from Nottingham in the UK, she completed her masters at the University of Warwick in 2013 and her PhD in particle physics at University College London in 2016, working on both the then world-leading LUX experiment and the under-construction LZ detector. LZ is located 1 mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. Sally is LZ's data analysis coordinator and deputy physics coordinator, overseeing the WIMP search and other physics analyses.

In the opposite vein to working 1 mile underground, Sally can often be found in the opposite direction hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Los Padres National Forest or any number of National Parks.

Research

Dark matter is 85% of the mass of the Universe; uncovering its nature is one of the highest priorities in science. Sally works on the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter detector, an experiment that aims to measure the interaction of a dark matter particle with an atomic nucleus. Global experimental efforts have mostly focused on Weakly Interaction Massive Particles (WIMPs), but LZ is also sensitive to other, beyond the Standard Model physics.
LZ is the largest and most sensitive dark matter detector of its kind, consisting of a 7T liquid xenon target, an 2T active skin veto and a 17T gadolinium-loaded liquid scintillator neutron veto (the Outer Detector, or OD). Sally works on many aspects of LZ but her unique expertise lies in three areas: leadership of LZ data analysis; all aspects of the OD, from design, simulation, and physics to QA, construction, commissioning and running; and simulation of radioactive backgrounds, in particular, neutrons.