Research Interests

Brodsky works on experiments probing the frontiers of neutrino physics. The detection of neutrinos requires sensitive detectors that can find the needle in a haystack of backgrounds; to accomplish this task, he works on detector design, simulations, and data analysis, with a particular focus on machine learning. In addition, Brodsky participates in the Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment (PROSPECT), a short-baseline reactor neutrino experiment, and the next Enriched Xenon Observatory (nEXO) neutrinoless double beta decay search. PROSPECT has just recently taken its first data and released its first results, while nEXO is an ambitious long-term project. Although at very different scales, both experiments search for new, beyond-the-standard-model neutrino physics.

Personal Background

Before coming to LLNL and taking up neutrino physics, Jason Brodsky completed his graduate research on dark matter at Princeton University. After a three-year postdoctoral appointment at LLNL, Brodsky became a staff scientist in the Nuclear & Particle Physics group. In 2017, Brodsky placed second in the LLNL Postdoctoral Research SLAM, a speaking competition requiring contestants to explain their research to a general audience in only three minutes. His talk, “Discovering the Neutrinos That Saved the Universe,” described the role the nEXO experiment plays in answering questions about the presence of matter in the universe.

Ph.D. Physics, Princeton University, 2015

A.B. Physics, Harvard University, 2009

• T. Alexander et al., Light yield in DarkSide-10: A prototype two-phase argon TPC for dark matter searches, Astroparticle Physics, Volume 49, September 2013, Pages 44-51, ISSN 0927-6505
• C. Aalseth et al., The DarkSide multi-ton detector for the direct dark matter search, Advances in High Energy Physics, vol. 2015, p. e541362, Jan. 2015.
• P. Agnes et al., First Results from the DarkSide-50 Dark Matter Experiment at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Physics Letters B, vol. 743, pp. 456–466, Apr. 2015.
• The DarkSide Collaboration, P. Agnes, et al., arXiv:1412.2969 [astro-ph, physics:physics], Dec. 2014.

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Honorable Mention, 2010, 2011