Prof. Figueroa-Feliciano leads Northwestern's experimental program in quantum sensing for particle physics. Key directions: (1) SuperCDMS SNOLAB — Northwestern's NU's role in the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search at SNOLAB (2 km underground in Canada), using ultra-pure Si and Ge crystals with superconducting TES sensors to detect low-mass dark matter (particles below the proton mass); in March 2026 the experiment reached operating temperature (<10 mK), transitioning to detector calibration for the first ever dark matter search at the site; (2) NEXUS facility at Fermilab: Northwestern-built test facility led by Figueroa-Feliciano for SuperCDMS detector calibration and for measuring how ionizing radiation affects superconducting qubits (published fall 2025); (3) Qubit-based quantum sensing: developing HVeV R&D devices with <1 eV resolution and qubit parity-detection techniques for eV-scale and sub-eV dark matter detection. Associate Vice President for Research at Northwestern; INQUIRE Executive Committee. Joint appointment at Fermilab.

Pyle designs cryogenic athermal-phonon and TES-based quantum sensors for the SuperCDMS experiment, pushing detector thresholds down toward single-phonon / meV-scale energy resolution to search for sub-GeV dark matter. The group is actively recruiting postdocs.

Shutt co-founded the CDMS/SuperCDMS cryogenic solid-state dark-matter detector program and is a leader of the LZ liquid-xenon experiment, developing ultra-sensitive detectors for direct dark-matter detection at the single-quantum level.