Group
Meet the talented researchers in Surukuchi Lab at University of Pittsburgh. Our diverse team includes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates working on cutting-edge neutrino physics research including CUORE, CUPID, and Project 8 experiments.
👨🏫 Faculty
Pranava Teja Surukuchi
Assistant Professor

My research interests span experimental neutrino physics, rare event searches, and detector development. I am particularly interested in understanding the fundamental properties of neutrinos and their role in physics beyond the Standard Model. Currently, I lead research efforts on Project 8, CUORE, CUPID, and Project 8.
I got my Ph.D. from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago working on PROSPECT reactor neutrino experiment where I led the detector fabrication and subsequently its first search for sterile neutrinos. I then joined the Wright Laboratory at Yale University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate shifting my research focus neutrino mass related physics.
🎓 Postdoctoral Researchers
Vivek Sharma
Postdoctoral Researcher working on the CUORE, CUPID, and Project 8 Experiment
Coming soon....

🎓 Graduate Students
Ehteshamul (Adil) Karim
Ph.D. Student working on the Project 8 Experiment

Coming soon....
Tristan Hurst
Ph.D. Student working on the CUORE and CUPID Experiments
I graduated from William & Mary in 2023 with a B.S. in Physics. While there, I worked on simulations and particle identification studies for the MOLLER Experiment and realized I wanted to further pursue experimental physics. I joined the Surukuchi group in the spring of 2024 and began working on the CUORE experiment which searches for evidence of neutrinoless double beta decay. I perform data analysis and noise reduction studies on experimental data with the goal of removing environmental background noise. I have worked onsite in Italy at LNGS, the lab where CUORE is located, a few times now testing potential new noise sensors to be deployed at cryogenic temperatures. Outside of work, I enjoy singing, cooking, and biking

🛠️ Staff
Yuvaraj Elangovan
Electronics Design Engineer leading Pitt-CoRTEx

Coming soon....
🔬 Undergraduate Students
Kyle Mo
Fabrication, characterization, simulation, and track reconstruction for Pitt-CoRTEx
I am an undergraduate student studying physics at Pitt, who is expected to graduate in 2026. In general, my primary research experience involves tackling the operational tasks of creating and running detectors. Besides working on muon detectors with Pitt-CoRTEx, I am also involved with the ATLAS detector and Vera C. Rubin Telescope as a part of Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Vincent Niedermeyer
Developing generative ML algorithms for synthetic CRES event generation

Coming soon....
Tyler Schutt
Developing ML algorithms for synthetic CRES event generation and track finding
Coming soon....

Megan (Meg) Gibbons
Investigating seismic detection capabilities of the CUORE detector

I am a physics and mathematics undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. I am currently working with data from the CUORE detector to identify and analyze the appearance of seismic events.
Sean Maloney
Working on monitoring software and detector support structures for Pitt-CoRTEx
I am currently a senior at Pitt and hope to one day enter graduate school in astrophysics. My research interests involve cosmology and high energy particles, particularly cosmic rays. I have attempted to gain a breadth of research experience, involving extra-galactic astrometric studies with Dr. TQ Zhang, and muon detector design and construction with Dr. Surukuchi.

📚 Past members
Brent Clelland
Undergraduate Researcher (Summer 2024 - Summer 2025) | Starting grad school at NC State
Fabrication, characterization, simulation, and track reconstruction for Pitt-CoRTEx.
Gregory (Greg) Kenning
Undergraduate Researcher (Fall 2024)
Investigated the possibility of using SQUIDs as accelerometers for CUORE/CUPID.
Zoe Fitzsimmons
Undergraduate Researcher (Summer 2024)
Automated data taking for Pitt-CoRTEx.