University of British Columbia (UBC) President Stephen Toope visited TRIUMF on August 17. President Toope, a lawyer by profession, is interested in the sciences and in strengthening the ties between TRIUMF and UBC. In his speeches, he has emphasized that he supports the goals of the TREK2010 report. Two of the many goals of TREK are to increase partnerships with foreign universities and institutes and to recognize the importance of outreach to the local community.
TRIUMF also supports these goals. The laboratory has research agreements with 55 foreign institutes, and our outreach program attracts approximately 2,000 public visitors to TRIUMF per year. As part of the world’s most advanced network and computing grid, TRIUMF is hosting Canada’s Tier 1 Computing Centre for the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. Thirty-five countries will be accessing data from the Centre. TRIUMF is also collaborating with 44 institutes around the world on superconducting radio frequency accelerator technology.
The collaboration between TRIUMF and UBC researchers is also very strong. There are roughly 85 UBC faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students who are actively carrying out their research at TRIUMF.
Director Nigel Lockyer and Associate Director Jean-Michel Poutissou gave President Toope a guided tour of the laboratory. He was able to visit with UBC Chemistry Professor Andrew MacFarlane and his students, who were busy taking data with their molecular and materials science experiment. Professor MacFarlane is an expert in the study of material surfaces using radioactive beams as a probe of the material’s magnetic properties. President Toope also met and chatted with Dr. Tadashi Shimoda, who is here with four of his students from Osaka University to run subatomic experiment 1114.
MDS Nordion’s General Manager of Vancouver Operations, gave President Toope a tour of Nordion’s facilities, including the “hot cells” and “clean rooms” where isotope Iodine-123, which is used as a radiotracer, is separated and sent all around the world, as far away as Australia.
At the end of the tour, Mindy Hapke of TRIUMF’s Design Group took a photograph of President Toope, Dr. Lockyer and Dr. Poutissou near the TIGRESS detector. No “owl shifts” on the detector have been scheduled yet, but President Toope hinted that he might just find it a change from his “day job.”