Amy MacLean of Mount Allison University, was last year's Undergraduate Summer Research Award (USRA) recipient at TRIUMF. She was given top honours for a poster presentation on her work in "green" chemistry at the annual Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) conference.
As a 2012 summer research student, Amy had been awarded second place in the TRIUMF Undergraduate Summer Symposium for her work designing a new muon cell for high pressure CO2 that can be used as a sustainable solvent in industry. Amy was part of a team of chemistry students at TRIUMF under the guidance of Dr. Khashayar Ghandi of Mount Allison's Department of Chemistry.
Her presentation on this work at the CSC conference earned her the award for best undergraduate physical chemistry/computational chemistry/theoretical chemistry poster.
Dr. Ghandi is very proud of Amy, saying that she is an outstanding student, matching the abilities of even some of his best graduate students for her professionalism and the quality of her work.
Amy is grateful to the team at the TRIUMF Centre for Molecular and Materials Science, as well as the staff at the TRIUMF Machine Shop for assisting her with trouble shooting during the design and testing of the muon cell.
Amy also credits her experience at TRIUMF with helping her to determine her path in academia. Having originally begun her studies in inorganic chemistry, her time at TRIUMF helped her to define her strengths. She has now just begun the first weeks of a Master's degree at Queen's University under Dr.Hans-Peter Loock on a project combining elements of chemistry, physics, and engineering.
"I most definitely wouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't done my summer research at TRIUMF. It was a pivotal part of my life, and I'm extremely grateful for the experience and the friends and connections I made there."
See Amy's winning poster here
-- Ariane Madden, Communications Assistant