Prof. Dominique Thers

(1997-2009) Dominique Thers completed his PhD under the Georges Charpak’s team on the development of the MicroPattern Gaseous Detector (MPGD) Micromegas for the COMPASS particle physics experiment at CERN. He joined the Subatech laboratory in Nantes in 2002. At the beginning of his career, he participated in the development of the trajectography system of the ALICE dimuon spectrometer at CERN as well as in the progressive valorization of a new autoradiography process based on an innovative gas detector. As a detector physicist, he have also undertaken the development of new detectors able to measure precisely the ionization signal generated in liquid xenon, a dense fluid particularly interesting for gamma-ray detection. Since 2009, he have been coordinating the Xenon team of the Subatech laboratory. He led the pioneer French team to join the XENON collaboration well known today by being at the international leader position for Direct Dark Matter Searches.

(2009-present) His research team includes now about 20 researchers. He gradually built one of the largest European research laboratories dedicated to the study of the properties of liquid xenon, with support from 1) local funding agencies for their applications in medical imaging and 2) national funding agencies for their applications in fundamental research (Direct Dark Matter Search and Rare Event Physics).