Prof. Giboni was member of the XENON100 Dark Matter Search experiment at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. In summer 2012 XENON100 set another limit for the cross section of WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), a factor 10 better than it’s 2011 result. Both results remain so far unchallenged, and XENON100 plans another upgrade of their detector for 2013. At SJTU Prof. Giboni joined the Panda-X Dark Matter project. After a cold start at SJTU the Dark Matter team presently installs a detector of limited size in the JinPing Laboratory in Sichuan Province, China. However, during 2013 the project is expected to close up with the fore front in Dark Matter search with the next, more than 10 times larger detector.

Besides Panda-X, Prof. Giboni invests major efforts in detector development programs, especially for liquid noble gas detectors. These novel detectors should benefit the next generation of Dark Matter experiments, including a further upgrade of Panda-X. But the same technologies also appear extremely promising for Medical Imaging, especially Positron Emission Tomography (PET).

The latest cross section limits of XENON100 signify that even in the best case the largest Dark Matter detector now under construction, XENON1T, will see only a handful of events. Thus, a detector in the ton-scale might prove the existence of WIMPs, but would never be sufficient to study them. A yet larger detector, however, might be unreasonably expensive. New technologies offering higher sensitivities and lower background have to be found which also significantly reduce the cost of such a detector.

 Prof. Giboni received his Ph.D from RWTH Aachen, Germany in 1981. He held post-doctoral positions at RWTH Aachen and Harvard University before joining Schlumberger Ltd. in 1986. In 1995 he returned to academia with a fellowship of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science before joining Columbia University as Research Scientist in 1996. In 2002 he became Senior Research Scientist at Columbia, the direct equivalent of Full Professor, but with research duties only. In 2009 he was Visiting Scientist at the High Energy Research Laboratory (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan. In 2010 he joined the Physics Department of SJTU as Zhiyuan Chair Professor.