It’s the time of year again for TRIUMF’s 11th Annual Summer Student Symposium, and with a crowd of 23 presenters, it was TRIUMF’s biggest symposium yet! Spread out over two days, undergraduate students from all over the facility presented the work they have done during their placement at TRIUMF. Each year, one student is selected to present her/his talk at the upcoming Winter Nuclear and Particle Physics Conference in Banff, AB, or at another suitable meeting of the student’s choosing.
Wednesday morning began with Moritz Hahn followed by Florian Fischer, both discussing their work with ultra-cold neutrons and their related experiments. Following them was Charles Cao, educating the audience on his work with the upcoming DUal purpose Experiment at TRIUMF (DUET), a project related to the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan. Next, we jumped to Jeff Bale and his presentation on evaporative cooling advances at TITAN. Afterwards, Brian Kootte discussed his work measuring the efficiency of the DRAGON facility. Trevor Uittenbosch followed with his work designing a more-efficient gas target for isotope production in the TR13 medical cyclotron The last morning talk was by Allison Radich on her project with the ISAC Beam and Target Development, measuring isotope production yields using gamma-ray spectroscopy.
The Wednesday afternoon session began with Jason Park presenting his work measuring Cherenkov light created by pions. Next Jeffery Zielinski discussed his projects with the vacuum and cryogenics group involving improving pump speed and capacity, as well as testing the behaviour of superconducting radiofrequency chambers. Following this was Brad Noakes, educating the audience on the 8π Spectrometer and its various ancillary detectors and scintillators, as well as the upcoming GRIFFIN project. Next on the docket was Nick Zacchia discussing his model of Beamline 2C1 which will help design a better treatment for proton cancer therapy patients. Following him was Samantha Fregien, talking about her work synthesizing a new PET tracer for Alzheimer’s research using Cobalt-55. Rounding out the day was Olivia Wasalski discussing her studies of Cherenkov light in the upcoming SNO+ experiment.
The Thursday presentations began with Tomi Nano discussing his work with TIGRESS detector testing and simulation. Zeinab Abboud followed, educating listeners on her designs for a Fast Ion Beam Kicker at ISAC that will improve isobaric contamination in the beams. Next was Jonah Nystoruk who made us switch gears a bit with his talk about the database application development work he does with the Management Information Systems group here. Then it was back to the physics with a series of ATLAS presentations, beginning with Natascha Hedrich and her search for the Higgs boson through its decay into two Z bosons and then into four leptons. Next was Derek Inman, telling the crowd about his search for the supersymmetric top quark in ATLAS data. Following Derek was Gabriel Magill who told us that if the Higgs has a low mass of approximately 150 GeV, its production by supersymmetric cascades could be detectible! Tanner Heggie then discussed his development work on the ATLAS diamond detector. Next was Kasia Tokarska who described her design for a new four-electrode ion source that will greatly improve the beam entering the cyclotron. Following her was Karol Krizka and his theory work with SUSY studying the decay of light supersymmetric top quarks. Lastly, Daniel Friesen concluded the Symposium discussing his work improving the laser system for the TRINAT experiment.
The quality of the talks was uniformly outstanding, and it was an unbelievable challenge for the judges to select only one who would be representing TRIUMF at a major Canadian conference next year. In the end, Samantha Fregien of Simon Fraser University (shown above) was selected and she will present her talk at the Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference happening June 2012 in Edmonton, Alberta. Charles Cao (University of British Columbia), Nick Zacchia (Concordia University), Jeff Bale (SFU), Natascha Hedrich (Thompson Rivers University), Gabriel Magill (McGill University), and Karol Krizka (SFU) were selected for Honourable Mentions and will receive a generous gift certificate.
Congratulations to all speakers!
-- Written by Lindsay Davies, Communications Assistant