Professor Kathryn Zurek works with the interface of particle physics, which includes cosmology and astrophysics. Her work spans both studies of new physics signatures at colliders, as well as astrophysical searches for dark matter (DM) and physics beyond the Standard model in the neutrino sector.

It is an exciting and active time because of the three avenues of exploration in the hunt for dark matter. The first is to produce the particle directly in the laboratory, one of the major goals of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The second is to directly detect the particle in a (usually) underground laboratory. The observation includes a DM particle bounding off a nucleus in a very sensitive detector creating a small recoil of energy. And the third is to see the products of the annihilations of such particles with detectors on the ground or in space. These last two methods have yielded some remarkable results recently, and she awaits the results to come from the LHC. As these new results, from CDMS, XENON, AMS, and Fermi and Planck experiments arrive, Professor Zurek is interested in correlating these many hints from direct and indirect detection of DM with signals from the LHC. She is also interested in solving related problems in beyond the Standard model of physics at the LHC involving extra dimensions, supersymmetry, and Hidden Valley models.