‪Jodi Ann Cooley (also published as Cooley-Sekula) is an American experimental physicist specializing in the search for particles that might constitute

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ab ...

. She is a professor of physics at

Southern Methodist University , mottoeng = "The truth will make you free" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = SACS , academic_affiliations = , religious_affiliation = United Methodist Church , president = R. Gerald Turner , prov ...

and the executive director of

SNOLAB SNOLAB is a Canadian underground science laboratory specializing in neutrino and dark matter physics. Located 2 km below the surface in Vale's Creighton nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, SNOLAB is an expansion of the existing facilities con ...

, an underground laboratory for dark matter physics and neutrino observation, located in a disused mine in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada.

Education and career

Cooley majored in applied mathematics and physics at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

, graduating in 1997. She continued at the same university for graduate study in physics, completing her Ph.D. in 2003 with the dissertation ''Searching for Neutrinos from Diffuse Astronomical Sources with the AMANDA-II Detector''. After postdoctoral research at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, working on the

Super-Kamiokande Super-Kamiokande (abbreviation of Super-Kamioka Neutrino Detection Experiment, also abbreviated to Super-K or SK; ja, スーパーカミオカンデ) is a neutrino observatory located under Mount Ikeno near the city of Hida, Gifu Prefecture ...

neutrino experiment, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher from 2004 to 2009 at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. There, her interests shifted from neutrinos to dark matter through her work on the

Cryogenic Dark Matter Search The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) is a series of experiments designed to directly detect particle dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (or WIMPs). Using an array of semiconductor detectors at millikelvin temperatur ...

CDMS-II experiment in the Soudan Underground Mine in Minnesota. She became an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University in 2009 and was tenured as an associate professor in 2014, continuing her work with the Soudan Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. In 2022 she was named executive director of SNOLAB.

Recognition

In 2018, Cooley was named a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

. In 2022, she was named a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of American Physic ...

(APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Particles and Fields, "for outstanding contributions to searches for dark matter particles". In 2019 the

American Association of Physics Teachers The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) was founded in 1930 for the purpose of "dissemination of knowledge of physics, particularly by way of teaching." There are more than 10,000 members in over 30 countries. AAPT publications includ ...

named her as the recipient of their Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award.

References

External links

Home page at SMU
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cooley, Jodi Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American physicists American women physicists University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Southern Methodist University faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the American Physical Society