Congratulations to Sen Mei, from Penticton Secondary School, and Darien Niamir, from Collingwood High School in West Vancouver, for being selected as the recipients of this year’s BC Innovation Council (BCIC) / TRIUMF High School Fellowship award. The two high school graduates will be rewarded with a six-week internship at TRIUMF to get a taste of amazing research projects and brilliant mentors. In addition to the experience gained over the internship, each student will be offered a $3,000 Fellowship award.
"TRIUMF welcomes Sen Mei and Dairen Niamir with great enthusiasm. We are thrilled to have these aspiring young scientists join the laboratory for the summer," said TRIUMF director Nigel S. Lockyer.
Mei and Niamir share a strong passion for exploring science and physics. The TRIUMF experience will allow them to follow their shared passion for physics while gaining insight into future career paths. At the end of the project in August 2008, an official ceremony will be held to present Mei and Niamir with their Fellowship awards.
"I’ve always been a curious person, especially in science, and even more so in physics," said Mei. "Physics is my favourite branch of science because it always has the beauty of symmetry -- balanced and conserved. It allows me to see how matter and energy exquisitely interact in space and time."
"My interest became focused on physics after watching Brian Greene’s BBC documentary, The Elegant Universe," said Niamir. "There was so much mystery or 'spookiness' in this subject that I was totally absorbed into it, realizing that we live in an unreal world that is shrouded in mysteries which are waiting to be discovered."
The TRIUMF High School Fellowship award was initiated in 2004 as a joint action by BCIC and TRIUMF to encourage students to pursue a career in sciences, physics in particular, and explore their passion for science. The opportunity to participate in real world research for Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics is offered to BC students entering their first year of undergraduate sciences at a recognized post-secondary institution. The participants are chosen not only for demonstrating academic performance but also for showing a promise of future outstanding achievement, with particular emphasis on communication skills and motivation.
For more information on the awards and the program, please see the BCIC site.
by Sandra Fleming
TRIUMF's Communications Assistant