Matthew Szydagis.

Dr. Matthew Szydagis, Associate Professor of Physics at UAlbany.

Professor Matthew Szydagis grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. He loved the character of Data, and realized science officer was the position for him. Inspired by the warp drive and time travel of Trek, he became a physicist. He received his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2005, 2006, and 2011, then continued his work in physics as a postdoc at the University of California Davis (2010- 2014). Since 2014, he has been on the faculty at UAlbany, pursuing experimental particle astrophysics, in particular direct laboratory detection of dark matter underground, and general detector development for "rare event" searches. He works on the liquid-Xenon-based LZ experiment and is a co-developer of the snowball chamber supercooled-water-based technology with his colleague Prof. Cecilia Levy and of NEST (Noble Element Simulation Technique). He has patents pending on small-scale nuclear reactor technology for UAP attraction, starred in the UFO documentary A Tear in the Sky produced and directed by Caroline Cory with Kevin Knuth, and has given over 200 talks on his research around the world in person / online. You can find him Friday nights on the History Channel on The Proof is Out There together with SCU's Rich Hoffman.