TRIUMF Awards Top Undergraduates

Hailing from Quebec, Pierre-Luc Gagnon is diving into the deepest mysteries of the universe with his research in dark matter experiments using argon pulse-shape discrimination (DEAP) for SNOLAB. His research interest lies primarily in High Energy Physics, which makes his summer term at TRIUMF a perfect fit. Pierre-Luc will be developing software tools for analysis and display of data collected under guidance from Pierre-André Amaudruz , as well as tools to control the data acquisition within the experiment. "I'm excited to be moving into new territory where I can continue to learn and advance my skill," said Pierre-Luc. 

In partnership with CERN and the Institute of Particle Physics, Sebastien Rettie will be travelling far from his home at the University of Ottawa to spend two months researching in collaboration with Dr. Anadi Canepa at TRIUMF, with the final two months of his research term to be spent at CERN in Switzerland. His project will consist of diving into the latest research in particle physics to search for supersymmetric particles with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. Sebastien is looking forward to learning more about supersymmetry through his research and exploring cutting-edge particle physics during the summer student lecture program at CERN later in the summer.  

Also representing Ontario, Carl Pigeon of Carleton University's Aerospace Engineering program is excited to begin research under Drs. Bernd Stelzer, Oliver Stelzer-Chilton and Robert McPherson. Carl will be working on the development of a muon detector upgrade for the TRIUMF ATLAS Group project, which analyzes data for experiments completed at CERN. Carl's goal will be to set up a working detector prototype to perform radiation-aging tests to determine how resilient the muon detector upgrade is to high radiation environments. He will also observe the impact of purging gas on the muon detector system. Carl hopes to expand his knowledge of particle physics, as well as become involved with the physics community here at TRIUMF. "An extra bonus", he says, "would be to be able to publish a research paper based on my work, which would be a great personal achievement and help me as I look towards graduate school". 

Representing Canada's Prairie region, Javier Hernandez is joining TRIUMF this summer to study nuclear theory, after having graduated from the University of Manitoba with a joint honors degree in physics and mathematics. Under guidance from Dr. Sonia Bacca, Javier will work on the "proton radius puzzle" which seeks to understand why there is a discrepancy between the recently measured charge radius of the proton in muonic hydrogen and the charge radius of the proton in electronic Hydrogen. Through their research, Bacca's team aims to calculate the various nuclear structure corrections to the Lamb shift in muonic deuteron. Experiments are being carried out on other muonic atoms to investigate whether the discrepancy with respect to ordinary atoms is systematic. Javier is thrilled to further develop his knowledge of theoretical and computational nuclear physics and hopes that this project will help to answer this fundamental physics question.

Though Calgary may be her hometown, Alysson Vrielink is perhaps most at home among Vancouver's mountain biking and whitewater kayaking scenery as an Engineering Physics student from the University of British Columbia. This summer Alysson will be completing research under supervision of Vladimir Zvyaginstev and Bob Laxdal in accelerator physics related to TRIUMF's ARIEL facility. Alysson previously worked with Vladimir and Bob to commission a radio-frequency deflecting cavity for the new electron linear accelerator (e-linac) within ARIEL that will be used to measure the beam bunch length once it is operational. Advancing from this prior research, Alysson will be rejoining the superconducting radio-frequency group to assist in developing high power couplers for the superconducting 9-cell cavities of the ARIEL e-linac. She hopes to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of the physics involved in building the e-linac, and to apply these principles to computer simulations, experiments or data analysis.