Professor Stan Metchev has been awarded a Distinguished Research Professorship in Science for the 2018-19 academic year.

The position is awarded based on special opportunities to implement a large collaborative grant, to pursue a high-risk, unique research avenue that is time sensitive and has a strong potential for a significant breakthrough, or to capitalize on a new and significant partnership.

The department of Physics and Astronomy extends a big congratulations to Stan on this achievement. It is certainly well deserved.

On Thursday March 15, 2018, the Physics and Astronomy Student Association (PASA) organized their annual Physics Undergraduate Conference (PhUnC).

PhUnC 2018 was a success by every measure. With 45 registered attendees, including 28 from eight other Ontario universities, as well as numerous unofficial attendees, it was by far the best attend in the event’s history. The keynote talk by Dr. Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute, was standing room only.

The summer research fellowship prize winner was Alicia Martin from Brock Univeristy with an oral presentation “A Monte Carlo Model of the ELEKTRA Agility Radiation Therapy Treatment Head”. As a result she has $3000 to support summer research with one of our faculty.

Runners up were Matt McCready (Western University, poster presentation, “Renal Cell Carcinoma”) and Ahmad Mahmood (McMaster Unversity, oral presentation, “Death and all his friends: The influence of physical membrane parameters on cell death”).

Honorable mentions went to Bill Truong (Brock University, oral presentation, “Application of the Ginzburg-Landau Theory to a one-D superconductor”); Jessica Speedie (McMaster University, poster presentation, “A study on the observed properties of galaxies in a large sample of compact groups identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey”) and Connor Dunne (poster presentation, Western University, “Blackbody radiation”).

Big thank yous are in order for all the volunteers and the entire PASA group: Adrian Mahjour, Colin Metrow, Tim Hallatt, Anastasia Codirenzi, Athithya Aravinthan, Claire Park, Danielle McFadden, Gaby Robles, Jefrey Judes, Mark Krammer, Matthew McCready, Mauli Bhatt, Nastaran Ghafouriansahraei, Nicholas Popiel, Sean Huggins, Stella Liu and Victoria Pinnegar. As well as the voluneteer judges, faculty and staff who supported the event, particularly Paul Wiegert, Rob Cockcroft, Phin Perquin and Jennifer Tilston.

Here’s to another great PhUnC in 2019!

[google photos of PhUnC 2018]

Professor Margaret Campbell-Brown has won the prestigious Faculty Scholar Award.

These awards are limited in number and recognize scholarly achievements of a faculty member at a critical point in his or her career. The awards recognize the complete scholar who has maintained an excellent record in teaching and research, and who has recently achieved prominence in one of these two domains.

The award enables professor Campbell-Brown to use the honorary title of Faculty Scholar for the academic years 2018- 19 and 2019-20, and includes an additional research grant in each year of the award.

Congratulations Margaret, the honour is well deserved!