December 20, 2023
Citation: "For the development of techniques expanding the low-energy reach of new particle detector technologies, with applications in neutrino physics, dark matter searches, and the study of charged-lepton flavor violating modes of muon decay."
Charles Mark Lewis earned B.S. degrees in physics, mathematics, and astronomy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2017 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2023 under the supervision of Prof. Juan I. Collar. His primary research revolved around the development of new technologies and measurement techniques sensitive to low-energy nuclear recoils and similarly-presenting processes like coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS). This included the first full characterization of cryogenic pure CsI, as a detector medium capable of high-statistic measurements of this neutral current cross-section, and the first measurement of CEvNS from reactor antineutrinos using a Ge point-contact detector at the Dresden-II core in Morris, IL. Additionally, he deployed a truly table-top Ge experiment to the TRIUMF facility’s M20 beamline to probe previously unexplored parameter space at the kinetic limit of muon decay in a search for a new neutral boson of possible cosmological interest. After graduating, he began working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, where he continues to take advantage of the available new physics in the low-energy regime through the design and deployment of the next-generation of CEvNS experiments at both nuclear reactors and spallation facilities.