Diana S. Parno is an experimental physicist at Carnegie Mellon University. As an Assistant Professor, she is involved in two main experiments: KATRIN, an effort in southwestern Germany to measure the absolute mass scale of the neutrino using tritium beta decay, and TRIMS, an effort in Seattle to test the molecular-physics theories that will be used in extracting the final KATRIN result). Her group is involved with maintenance, operation and characterization of the main KATRIN detector system; data-quality assurance for the entire experiment; and background studies. We are also working to understand the molecular physics of gaseous tritium sources more generally, both with anticipated KATRIN data and with a dedicated experiment in Seattle, the Tritium Recoil-Ion Mass Spectrometer (TRIMS). Diana also contribute to the COHERENT collaboration, which seeks to measure a predicted Standard-Model process -- coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, or CEvNS -- using several different types of detectors at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
More details on Diana's research can be found here.