Searches for direct pair production of third generation squarks with the ATLAS detector

Naturalness arguments for weak-scale supersymmetry favour supersymmetric partners of the third generation quarks with masses light enough to be produced at the LHC. The ATLAS experiment has a variety of analyses devoted to direct production of stops and sbottoms, exploiting novel reconstruction and analysis techniques. This talk presents recent results from these searches and their interpretation in both supersymmetric models and simplified associated-production dark matter models.