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Industry Canada paid a visit to TRIUMF yesterday (Sep 21, 2011). Led by Assistant Associate Deputy Minister Mitch Davies from Ottawa, the three visitors spent about 75 minutes at the laboratory. The group met with TRIUMF staff and learned about TRIUMF's international and industrial partnerships and then took a short tour of the facility. Mr. Davies was accompanied by Philip Fleming and Eric Barker from the Pacific regional office of Industry Canada.
During the first part of the visit, Mitch Davies got an overview of TRIUMF from Director Nigel Lockyer. Nigel reminded him of the unique nature of TRIUMF and its areas of strength in particle physics, nuclear physics, materials science, and nuclear medicine (with some chemistry threaded through all of those). Paul Schaffer provided an update on the NRCan-supported project to demonstrate Tc-99m production on existing cyclotrons; he also talked about the broader nuclear medicine program and the expanding research and development ties with Nordion. Reiner Kruecken spoke about the physics side of "advancing isotopes for science and medicine" and commented on the window of opportunity for TRIUMF to lead the world in some key measurements. Bob Laxdal explained the cross-cutting impact of TRIUMF's expertise in accelerators and the partnership with PAVAC that gave Canadian industry a new competency and created new market connections to India and China. Jerry Porter from Nordion talked about the successful history of the manufacturing partnership between TRIUMF and Nordion. Colin Jones from AAPS, Inc. provided an update on the commercialization projects at the CECR and highlighted the important role that proximity to TRIUMF played in the organization's success. In the ensuing discussion, Mitch asked shrewd questions about how TRIUMF measures its performance against other labs and what features of Canadian science and culture were most effective in attracting the world's top talent to the nation. He was interested in how the TITAN experiment achieved its global prowess in the business of measuring the mass of rare isotopes, and he was curious about the scope of the market analysis for the emerging geotomography project at AAPS.
The lightning-fast tour gave all three visitors a chance to experience TRIUMF up close and personal. They visited the SRF labs, the nuclear-physics experiments in ISAC-I, the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre (courtesy Reda Tafirout), and the GMP labs for nuclear medicine. On the way out, they even peeked into the Meson Hall and stopped by AAPS, Inc. for a short demonstration of the radiation-reducing technology being developed by IKOMED.
This visit was an important opportunity to share the excellence and excitement of TRIUMF with some of the key managers of the public's tax dollars for science. It was effective and time well spent.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the visit and helped organize it. And a special thank you to Mitch and his colleagues for making the trip to TRIUMF!
--by T.I. Meyer, Head, Strategic Planning & Communications
Photo Credit: M. Hapke