Curriculum Vitae

Selected highlights

• New measurements with neutrinos. Proposed and developed the frameworks for measurements next-generation detectors were not designed for. These include leptonic CP violation with sub-GeV atmospheric neutrinos (Hyper-K, DUNE), atmospheric $\nu_\tau$ appearance via neutral currents (JUNO), neutral-current solar neutrino detection (DUNE), and the cosmic-ray spectrum measured through atmospheric neutrinos.
• Dark matter and new physics with neutrino detectors. New probes of dark matter captured in Jupiter and annihilating in the Galaxy, dark matter-nucleon interactions constrained by ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray acceleration, stellar probes (white dwarfs, stars orbiting supermassive black holes), and the first neutrino-telescope limits on long-lived supersymmetric particles.
• Predictions that hold up at the detector level. Former member of P-ONE and IceCube, where I provided the atmospheric-cascade and bioluminescence background models their analyses depend on. My phenomenology for Hyper-K, DUNE, JUNO, and KM3NeT is independent of those collaborations, but is built on that experience.
• Open tools. Lead developer and maintainer of Prometheus, the open-source neutrino telescope simulation now used across the field, and author of softpaws (analytic neutrino-telescope effective areas), Fennel (light yields) and bib-checker (bibliography validation against INSPIRE).
• Independent visibility. 13 invited talks and seminars, including Stanford, Harvard, Queen's, Texas A&M, Ohio State, UNSW, and the Mitchell Conference.
• Mentoring. Supervised three PhD students, two Master's students, and three undergraduate or junior researchers. Graduate lecturer in dark matter direct detection. Organized the Melbourne theory seminar series.
• Funding and recognition. Marie Curie Seal of Excellence (2021), Laby Early Career Researcher Award, and an ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter ECR Special Initiatives grant.

Academic appointments

• Oct 2025 – Present
  Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Iowa, USA
• Feb 2026 – Present
  Affiliate / User, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA
• Sep 2022 – Aug 2025
  Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Neutrino Phenomenology, The University of Melbourne, Australia
• Oct 2025 – Jun 2026
  Honorary Fellow, The University of Melbourne, Australia
• Sep 2022 – Jun 2026
  Affiliate Fellow, Ohio State University (CCAPP), USA

Former member. P-ONE (2019 to 2023) and IceCube (2017 to 2023).

Education

• 2017–2021
  Technical University Munich, Germany
  Dr. rer. nat. in Physics, summa cum laude. Advisor: Prof. Elisa Resconi

  • Thesis: "Precision Background Modelling for Neutrino Detectors." Cascade-equation, Monte Carlo, and machine-learning methods for particle transport in neutrino detectors.
• 2014–2017
  Technical University Munich, Germany
  M.Sc. Physics. Advisor: Prof. Andreas Weiler
• 2011–2014
  University of Innsbruck, Austria
  B.Sc. Physics. Advisor: Prof. Gebhard Grübl

Funding and awards

• 2023
  ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, ECR Special Initiatives Program (12,000 AUD)
  Competitive early-career grant supporting an independently proposed dark matter research project.
• 2023
  Laby Early Career Researcher Award (4,000 AUD)
  School of Physics award recognizing outstanding early-career research at the University of Melbourne.
• 2021
  Marie Curie Seal of Excellence, project "Nu-Eyes"
  European Commission recognition of a self-authored fellowship proposal rated above the funding threshold.
• 2019
  TUM and Imperial College London Collaboration Fund ($2,680)
  Seed funding for "Advanced mathematical models for the simulation chain of neutrino detectors."

Teaching and mentoring

I have supervised three PhD students, two Master's students, and three undergraduate or junior research projects, and I deliver graduate lectures in dark matter and particle physics. My mentoring model is to give students a self-contained piece of a larger program, with a clear path to publication. The work of Ho Man Yim (PhD candidate, Melbourne) on sub-GeV atmospheric CP violation grew directly into a paper, and Kruteesh Desai, whose Bachelor's project I supervised, went on to lead a published dark matter search with IceCube and P-ONE.

• Lecturer, University of Iowa. Dark Matter Direct Detection (graduate lectures).
• Teaching Assistant, TUM. Experimental Physics 1, 3, and 4, and Theoretical Mechanics (summer course), 2018 to 2020.

Supervised students

• Esmenaz Isik (PhD, Iowa). Solar Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Ruohan Li (PhD, TUM). Dark Matter and Bioluminescence Searches with P-ONE
• Ho Man Yim (PhD, Melbourne). Probing CP Violation with Sub-GeV Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Jeongoh Park (Master's, Melbourne). Dark Matter Annihilation Signals in JUNO
• Jan Henrik Schmidt-Dencker (Master's, TUM). Stau Search in IceCube, published as an ICRC proceeding
• Kruteesh Desai (Undergraduate / junior, TUM). Solar Atmospheric Neutrino Modelling
• Fruzsina Mädlings (Undergraduate / junior, TUM). Search for Muon Tracks in STRAW Deep-Sea Data
• Mingyang Li (Undergraduate / junior, TUM). Muons from Electromagnetic Showers

• Group infrastructure. Two open tools support research training. nestling (GitHub) is an onboarding framework for new students, and jc-ppi (GitHub) runs a journal club.

Service and community engagement

• Referee for Physical Review Letters and Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
• Computing Workshop, ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, 2024. One of the hosts, and lecturer on "Detector Simulations" and "Advanced Python". Part of the ECR Special Initiatives Program (2023).
• Theory seminar series, University of Melbourne, 2023 to 2025. Organized and ran the series for two years.

Additional experience

• Holo-Light, Germany. Programmer (2017). Developed a precision VR input device, the "Holo-Stylus," for the Microsoft HoloLens, and built and demonstrated a working prototype.
• AVL Advanced Simulation Technologies, Austria. Solver developer (2009, 2013, 2014). Acoustic modeling of car engines, improving a Fortran wave-based-technique framework in its integration methods and coordinate systems.
• Austrian Red Cross, Austria. Paramedic (2010/11). Paramedic training and duties during civil service.
• Languages: English and German (native).

Publications, software and talks have their own pages. See Publications, Software, Talks.