Sponsor: Central Coast Section
Speaker: Dr. Amalia Madden, Ph.D., KITP, UCSB

Date: 21 May 2025
Time: 06:00 PM PDT to 08:30 PM PDT
Cost:
Location:
Reservations: IEEE
Summary: Ordinary matter is everything familiar to us—stars, planets, people—but about 85% of all matter is actually invisible, neither emitting light nor interacting through almost any known forces of nature. We infer dark matter’s existence only through the profound gravitational influence it exerts on the cosmos. Scientists realized over a century ago that dark matter exists, yet understanding what it is made of and what laws of physics govern it remain among the greatest unsolved puzzles in physics.
Join KITP Postdoctoral Scholar Amalia Madden to explore the compelling evidence for dark matter, discuss why understanding it is essential to uncovering the history of our Universe, and learn how researchers today are designing innovative experiments to reveal its hidden nature.

Bio: Amalia Madden is a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She received her PhD (2024) and MS (2019) from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada and her MSci (2018) from Imperial College London in the UK. Her research focuses on mathematical models of new fundamental particles—especially dark matter—and on designing new ways to detect signals of physics that go beyond our current best theories of particle physics.