Yesterday, I successfully defended my thesis The Low-Energy and Large-Scale Frontier of Dual-Phase Xenon Time Projection Chambers for Dark Matter Search. The talk and the exam went really great and my committee recommended my work for distinction. I thank my supervisor Laura Baudis for the unique opportunity to work with her, for teaching and pushing me and giving me the freedom to develop. Thanks to her and the other committee members for the great guidance. Afterwards, we had a great party with my old group and my family. I will miss you folks! (The PhD hat in the picture is the result of the great and dedicated machining work of my friend Frédéric Girard.)

After many online safety training courses at CERN, I finally had a classroom course on safety with handling cryogenic liquids today. Although this was not my first one of this type and I have worked a lot with LN2 and LXe during my PhD, it was a really well presented course and a good recap for me. The picture shows a setup to demonstrate the condensation of oxygen from the air on surfaces at LN2 temperature.

Although my contract with the University of Hawai’i started on New Year, my start as a User on-site CERN was a bit delayed due to the pandemic. I had an exciting first day, meeting my colleagues around Hanguo Wang and seeing the UAr Cryo-Setup of DS-20k for the first time.