I am an Astroparticle Physicist
I am interested in understanding Dark Matter. I am from Tunisia, came to the US in 2008, obtained an undergraduate degree in physics at Boston University in 2012. I then received a PhD in particle physics at MIT in 2017, under the supervision of Prof. Jesse Thaler. I was a Sherman Fairchild Fellow at Caltech from 2017 to 2020, a UC Presidential fellow at UC Irvine, then a Fellow at Carnegie Observatories in 2020 before starting as an Assistant Professor of physics in Theoretical Astrophysics at MIT in July 2021.
Research
Galactic Dynamics
Using Gaia, I modeled the kinematics of accreted stars, some of which originate from particular merger events, such as the Gaia Sausage/Gaia Enceledus.
I also discovered a new structure, called Nyx, after the Greek Goddess of the night.
Telescopes
I analyzed various telescope data to understand the kinematics of stars, and how it plays with Dark Matter kinematics. For example, the Fermi Telescope, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Collider Physics
I worked on implementing methods to distinguish particular events at the Large Hadron Collider from backgrounds. Such methods were used by the experiments to set limits on hypothetical Dark Matter particles.
Simulations
I used a variety of hydrodynamic simulations, FIRE, Eris, and Illustris, to correlate Dark Matter with observables.
Model Building
I built a few Dark Matter models, for example Boosted Dark Matter, and studied how it can be detected in Neutrino Experiments.
Lina Necib 