ABOUT

Biographical sketch

Joseph Formaggio received his B. S. degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University in 2001, where he did his dissertation on high energy neutrino physics. In 2001, he joined the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington. He joined the MIT faculty in 2005, where he continues to work on experimental neutrino physics.

Research Interests

Joseph Formaggio is an experimental nuclear physicist whose work has focused on understanding the fundamental properties of neutrinos. His previous work on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory helped shed light on the “solar neutrino problem”, which helped to firmly establish that neutrinos have mass. His subsequent work, which continues to this day, builds on this discovery and hopes to shed light on the nature and scale of the mass of the neutrino. He is a member of the KATRIN and Project 8 experiments, which use the process of tritium beta decay —originally proposed by Enrico Fermi— to measure the mass of the neutrino directly.

Formaggio’s group develops novel detector technologies and techniques to better understand the properties of neutrinos and other rare and exotic particles. The group developed the technique of cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy (CRES) to accurately measure the energy of electrons emitted in beta decay (a technique now used by the Project 8 experiment). The Formaggio group is also developing new cryogenic bolometers to better understand neutrino interactions at extremely low energies. Such detectors are part of the upcoming Ricochet experiment, which aims to study the process of coherent neutrino scattering using neutrinos created in nuclear reactors.

More recently, the group has been exploring the potential role of quantum sensors and quantum readout systems for the purpose of detecting neutrinos and other weakly-interacting particles. Formaggio also collaborates with Prof. Lindley Winslow on the upcoming CUPID neutrinoless double beta decay experiment.