Alvine Kamaha, the Cameroonian physicist with an inspiring career path

Physicist and Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, Alvine Kamaha is a specialist in astroparticle studies. In 2024, the Cameroonian was awarded the Edward Bouchet Prize of the American Physical Society. This award recognizes under-represented minorities who have made significant contributions to scientific research.

Alvine Kamaha is well known for her work on dark matter. After a bachelor’s and master’s degree in theoretical physics at the University of Douala in Cameroon, she got a scholarship to the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, where she obtained a second master’s degree.

She then joined Queen’s University in Canada, where she focused on experimental physics and earned a PhD in astroparticle physics in 2015. She then took up two postdoctoral positions, at Queen’s University in 2015 and at the University of Albany in New York State, USA, in 2018.

While doing her PhD at Queen’s University, she worked at SNOLAB, Sudbury’s Neutrino Observatory. There, she carried out research into the detection of dark matter, and designed and built a device for the New Experiments with Sphere (NEWS) project, aimed at detecting dark matter particles.

During Covid 19, she coordinated an experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota and served on the experiment’s Equity and Inclusion Committee.

Since 2021, she has been Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she leads the ExCAliBUR research group, dedicated to experimental detector calibrations and background controls for underground particle physics research.

Alvine Kamaha is a member of the Canadian Association of Physicists, as well as the American Physical Society, the African Physical Society, the African Astronomical Society, and the National Society of Black Physicists of the USA.

In 2019, she won the University at Albany’s Women in Science & Health Award (Excellence in Science and Life) and the American Physical Society’s Edward Bouchet Award in 2024.