Former TRIUMF/UBC PhD student Guy Leckenby has been awarded the GSI Exotic Nuclei Community (GENCO) Young Scientist Award 2025 for “the precise determination of the bound-state beta decay half-life of fully-ionized 205Tl and its application to standing open questions about element abundances in the solar system and the solar neutrino flux.”.
Guy started his scientific career at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra before coming across the great ocean to Vancouver to pursue his graduate studies at UBC and TRIUMF in 2019. He defended his PhD thesis (“Exotic Decay Measurements at the Experimental Storage Ring for Neutron Capture Processes”) in November 2024.
The focus of Guy’s thesis work was devoted to the precision determination of the bound-state beta-decay half-life of the fully-ionized Thallium isotope Tl-205. Tl-205 is stable as neutral atom but becomes radioactive if all bound electrons are removed (charge state 81+).
This measurement was among the major motivations for the construction of the Fragment Separator/ Experimental Storage Ring facility complex at GSI Darmstadt more than 30 years ago, and throughout the years it has continuously been the flagship case of the NUSTAR research and in particular of the ILIMA (Isomers, LIfetimes, and MAsses) Collaboration. The experiment was a great success and lead to two high-level publications: Nature 635, 321 (2024) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 232701 (2024).
The Nature publication, led by Guy as first author, discusses the origin of Solar system. Thanks to the new experimental data, an answer can finally be given about the puzzling low amount of Lead atoms in our Solar system. Guy was also the second leading author of the Physical Review Letter publication which addresses the fate of the LORandite EXperiment (LOREX), which aimed at providing the flux of Solar neutrinos averaged over the last 3.2 My.
The contribution of Dr. Leckenby to this success is significant, and his world-leading co-authors from different nuclear astrophysics disciplines were uniformly impressed by Guy’s scientific maturity and knowledge which exceeds by far what you would have expected from a PhD student.
Guy has a strong passion for science communication, leveraging his enthusiasm for physics to engage younger students. For this young career stage, Guy’s CV is already very impressive and he has already achieved an extensive list of Honors and Awards, for example:
- Recipient of the prestigious Tuckwell Scholarship in 2014. Through this award he met the Australian Prime Minister and was selected to represent the National Press Club and Future Shapers Lunch group in a meeting with the Australian Governor General
- Recipient of a 4-year doctoral fellowship from UBC
- Winner of the poster prize at the prestigious Gordon Research Conference “Patterns and Reactions of Exotic Nuclei” in 2023 which led to a presentation at the conference
- Winner of the best presentation prize at the Canadian Winter Nuclear Physics Particle Physics (WNPPC) conference in 2021
- Recipient of a MITACS Globalink Research Award which partially covered his 12-week stay at GSI Darmstadt in 2022
The GENCO Young Scientist Award is presented annually since 2000 to outstanding young researchers working in the field of experimental or theoretical nuclear physics or chemistry. The winners are selected by an international jury. The prize is endowed with €1000 euros.
At the 25th anniversary of GENCO in February 2025 Guy Leckenby received the award for his investigations of the decay of fully-ionized thallium-205 using the combination of Fragment Separator and Experimental Storage Ring (FRS-ESR) at GSI/FAIR to clarify open questions of the lead-205 dating in the early solar system.
Congrats, Guy!
Read the full GSI Press Release
