The 15th international conference on Nuclear Structure (NS2014) has been held from July 20-25 in the Life Science Building on the UBC campus. This biennial conference is organized by North American national laboratories, returning to Canada for the first time since 1992.
TRIUMF hosted the Nuclear Structure conference this year, chaired by Greg Hackman and a local organizing committee comprised of nuclear physicists from TRIUMF, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Guelph. The new TRIUMF director Jonathan Bagger opened the conference, and throughout the week, 174 attendees from 22 countries and 80 different institutions discussed the latest experimental and theoretical research, with emphasis on the properties of nuclei at the extremes of isospin, excitation energy, mass, and angular momentum.
At NS2014, 65 talks and about 70 posters were presented. The poster prize was sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Nuclear Physics (CINP) and the CAP Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP). An international committee selected Jennifer Pore (Simon Fraser University), Michelle Dunlop (University of Guelph), and Oscar Javier Hernandez (University of Manitoba/ TRIUMF). All three students were awarded with $200.
A touching "celebration of life" session on Tuesday was devoted to George Dracoulis, the world-famous Australian nuclear structure physicist and regular participant to this conference series, who passed away in June 2014 at age 69.
Outside of the lecture hall, the delegates had the chance to visit some of UBC’s and Vancouver’s attractions, including a tour of TRIUMF, an excursion to Grouse Mountain or a boat cruise up the Indian Arm, and a visit including the conference dinner at the Museum of Anthropology.
Following the conference on Friday, about 25 participants joined the "3rd North American Workshop on Beta-Delayed Neutron Emission". This years' workshop celebrated the 75th anniversary of the discovery of the beta-delayed neutron emission in 1939 with 12 talks dedicated to the ongoing and future projects in many radioactive-beam facilities around the world, including TRIUMF's ISAC and future ARIEL facility.
A sincere congratulation is due to Greg Hackman, Jana Thomson, and all members of both, the local organizing committee and the international advising committee. Excellent work bringing together a world of experts for the Nuclear Structure 2014! The next Nuclear Structure conference will be held in 2016 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.