Chiara Salemi

The scientific driver of my research is the search for axions, one of the leading candidates to be the universe's dark matter. Axions are elusive particles—they interact very feebly and weigh orders of magnitude less than any of the known particles. In order to find them, I build cryogenic experiments that rely on superconducting quantum sensors to detect the tiny signals that we expect when axions interact with magnetic fields. 

I primarily work in two mass ranges: neV-scale axions with the DMRadio experiments, and meV-scale with BREAD. My work in the DMQIS group centers on the higher mass range, developing qubit-based sensors (SQUATs) for THz photon detection and developing the corresponding calibration systems.

Chiara completed her Ph.D. in 2022 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after getting a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. She is currently a Porat Postdoctoral Fellow at KIPAC and will be starting a position as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in January 2025.