Alvine Kamaha is a Cameroonian-born assistant professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).^[1]

Early life and education

Kamaha graduated from the University of Douala in Cameroon with undergraduate and master's degrees in theoretical physics.^[1] She earned an additional master's degree at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.^[1][2]

She transitioned from theoretical to experimental physics when she went on to Queen's University for her Ph.D. in astroparticle physics.^[1] Her first postdoctoral position was at Queen's University and her second was at the University at Albany in New York.^[1][3]

Career

While pursuing her Ph.D. at Queen's University, Alvine Kamaha worked at Sudbury's SNOLAB with Gilles Gerbier, Queen's Professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair.^[4] Gerbier studied dark matter particles, and Kamaha built a new apparatus to find those particles.^[4] Her work was primarily for an experiment called New Experiments With Spheres (NEWS) with the goal of detecting dark matter particles with spheres containing a ball attached by a rod and filled with a gas which would then ionize upon interaction with dark matter particles.^[4] The electrons in the gas would move to the center of the sphere when voltage was given to the ball and that would cause an avalanche.^[4] The movement would form an electric pulse, resulting in data which would be analyzed for potential dark matter particle detection.^[4]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kamaha was a calibration operations coordinator for the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota and served on the experiment's equity and inclusion committee.^[1]

Kamaha played an important role in ensuring the LZ was free of dust or any other potential contamination during the assembly stage.^[5] Kamaha then led work on the calibration system to ensure common particles were not confused with dark matter.^[5] The dark matter particles detected by the LZ are called weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs.^[5] While initial experiments did not detect dark matter, Kamaha contributed to building the cleanest and most sensitive instrument in the world to detect WIMPs.^[5][6][7][8]

Kamaha is an assistant professor of physics at UCLA where she is the inaugural Keith and Cecilia Terasaki Chair in Physical Sciences.^[5][9][10] Kamaha's research group, ExCaliBUR (Experimental Detector Calibrations & Background Controls for Underground Particle Physics Research), focuses on developing technologies that can detect dark matter.^[11]

She is the recipient of the American Physical Society's 2024 Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to uncovering dark matter in the universe and fostering diversity through mentorship.^{[12][13][14][15][16][17]} She is a role model for African girls who aspire to a career in science and a source of pride for Cameroon.^[18]

Selected publications

• A. Kamaha, "The Quest for Dark Matter With LUX-ZEPLIN," Annual Conference and General Assembly of the African Astronomical Society, (AfAS-2022), March 2022.
• Akerib, D. S.; et al. (2020). "The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) radioactivity and cleanliness control programs". The European Physical Journal C. 80 (11). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8420-x. hdl:2027.42/173198. S2CID 219305488.
• Akerib, D.S.; et al. (2020). "The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 953. arXiv:1910.09124. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2019.163047. S2CID 204800748.
• Archambault, S.; et al. (2012). "Constraints on low-mass WIMP interactions on 19F from PICASSO". Physics Letters B. 711 (2): 153–161. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2012.03.078. hdl:2022/26456. S2CID 4285716.
• Arnaud, Q.; et al. (2018). "First results from the NEWS-G direct dark matter search experiment at the LSM". Astroparticle Physics. 97: 54–62. arXiv:1706.04934. doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2017.10.009. S2CID 119417744.

References