Washington & Jefferson College Athletics

Dr. Kirsten McMichael (she/her) obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and B.S. in Physics from Washington and Lee University where she was also an active member of the cross country and track and field teams. After completing her Ph.D. she became a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University.

Her research interests lie in the field of experimental nuclear and astro-particle physics where she explores the secrets of the universe through the study of nature’s smallest particle – the neutrino. She is currently involved in three large international collaborations; nEXO (a next generation experiment hoping to observe an exceedingly rare process, neutrinoless double beta decay, which could provide insight into the matter/anti-matter asymmetry of the universe), COHERENT (an experiment that utilizes multiple detectors based at Oak Ridge National Lab to measure Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering), and KATRIN (a direct neutrino mass measurement experiment based in Germany).