Institute, founded 2003
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC)
KIPAC is the Stanford and SLAC institute for particle astrophysics and cosmology. Its scientists led construction of Rubin Observatory's giant camera.
- Location
- Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park/Stanford, California
- Focus
- Dark energy, Dark matter, Cosmology, Black holes, Telescopes and missions
- Coordinates
- 37.428, -122.173
The Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) is a joint laboratory of Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. It was founded in 2003 with a gift from Fred Kavli and The Kavli Foundation and is one of 20 Kavli Institutes. Its directors have been Roger Blandford (2003-2013), Tom Abel (acting from 2013, director from 2015) and Risa Wechsler (since 2018). KIPAC works where particle physics meets the cosmos: dark matter, dark energy and the extreme environments around black holes.
Flagship projects
- LSST Camera: KIPAC’s Aaron Roodman led construction of the 3,200-megapixel camera for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, built at SLAC.
- Rubin dark energy science: KIPAC members work on the survey’s cosmology.
- LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ): members, including Dan Akerib, work on this liquid-xenon dark matter experiment.
Recent results
The camera KIPAC helped build is now in use: Rubin began its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time in mid-2026, after Data Preview 1 showed what the pipelines can do. In dark matter, LZ’s first search in 2023 set world-leading limits on WIMPs, and in September 2026 it reported a single event that known backgrounds struggle to explain, at 2.6 sigma, far below the 5 sigma needed for a discovery. KIPAC’s Jesse Han received the 2026 Robert J. Trumpler Award for the top North American astrophysics thesis.
What to watch, 2026-2030
- October to December 2026: Rubin’s Data Preview 2 completes.
- LZ’s 2026 result is being submitted to Physical Review Letters; more data will show whether the single event is a fluctuation.
Why scientists are converging here
Few places hold a major dark energy survey camera and a leading dark matter detector under one roof. In our Research Pulse count, mentions of alternative dark matter candidates rose from the six months to March 2026 to the six months to September 2026: “primordial black hole” by 30% (146 to 189 abstracts) and “axion” by 14%. These counts track attention, not evidence, but they show a field widening its search while experiments like LZ keep tightening the WIMP limits.