Darkside-20k

In May 2025, I had the privilege of accompanying Ako Jamil to his workplace. The laboratory where he and his team conduct their research is located 1.4 kilometers beneath the Gran Sasso massif in the Abruzzo region of Italy. The Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is one of the largest underground laboratories in the world. Here, they are searching for something that is very likely all around us, yet has never been detected: dark matter.

Ako was born in Erbil in 1993. When he was three years old, he moved to Germany with his parents. He went to school in Nuremberg and later studied physics in Erlangen, Stanford, and Yale. Through a fellowship at Princeton University, he joined the DarkSide-20k project, and since 2023 he has been working at LNGS.

DarkSide-20k is funded 80% by the European Union and 20% by the United States. In 2026, the U.S. National Science Foundation faces potential budget cuts of more than 50% under the Trump administration. Whether the experiment can continue remains uncertain.

Science Notes Magazin 2/2025
Photo Editor: Sandra Teschow