Organization

TRIUMF is an enterprise that includes on-site technical, engineering, and administrative staff; university researchers and students; private-sector collaborators and licensees; international collaborators; and publicly funded agencies supporting basic research in Canada’s interests.  TRIUMF’s organization reflects these multiple stakeholders working together in concert.

TRIUMF’s many important achievements were enabled by public funding from the provincial and federal governments and through the judicious use of all available resources: financial, intellectual, and physical. Similarly, TRIUMF’s plans for the future are enabled by future funding and by continuing to build on the foundation of the current resources described in this section. These resources are a culmination of more than $1 billion of public investments over the past 40 years coupled with the wisdom and experience of a highly trained staff. Taken together, these resources represent a formidable asset that can be deployed on key areas of the nation’s research agenda.

The mix of resources at TRIUMF is very different than at a university. This results in different synergies than are possible at a university. In fact, TRIUMF’s main strength is that it has a range of resources, both human and hardware, that can be applied coherently to a given problem. A typical TRIUMF user from the Canadian research community obtains technical support, collaborates with on-staff scientists, and may use a TRIUMF project engineer. This is in addition to any use of the physical resources. University-based researchers want to work with TRIUMF because these resources simply are not available at their home institutions. Scientists at TRIUMF become the key points of contact for their research. This contact helps foster collaborative partnerships among Canadian researchers and between Canadian researchers and their international colleagues. TRIUMF also provides salary support (in whole or in part) for about a dozen scientists resident at Canadian universities. This support strengthens the scientific and intellectual ties between TRIUMF and the universities. In addition, as an active research centre, TRIUMF maintains an atmosphere that promotes intellectual activity through seminars, visitor programs, and workshops. Tying it all together is a management structure geared to maximizing the science impact for Canada.