Participating Physicists
Carla Babcock
Originally studying astrophysics, Carla Babcock was lured away by the possibility of working at CERN, where she did ion trapping and laser spectroscopy for nuclear structure at their nuclear physics lab. She then returned to Canada to work on mass measurements of exotic nuclei at TRIUMF. Babcock is currently working in the targets and ion sources group for ARIEL and ISAC. Her research area examines accelerator development for nuclear physics.
Jess Brewer
Andrea Capra
Andrea Capra graduated in Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics at the Universita` degli Studi di Pavia in Italy in 2011, obtaining a PhD in Physics at York University in Toronto in 2016. He has worked on ALPHA – the Antihydrogen Laser experiment at CERN – since 2011, where his focus is on antihydrogen (annihilation) detection. In 2016 Andrea joined TRIUMF as Research Associate to design and build a detector for a novel experiment to measure antimatter gravity – ALPHA-g. This year he joined the Darkside collaboration, which is developing a large-scale detector to search for possible candidates of dark matter particles.
Sarah Dunsiger
Sarah Dunsiger is currently a research scientist within the Centre for Molecular and Materials Science at TRIUMF. Her research areas include magnetic systems, complex ordering and spin fluctuations.
Ewan Hill
To the ATLAS Experiment at CERN: Previous PhD student in the Supersymmetry working group
To the Belle II Experiment in Japan: The new person taking over a calibration of the detector time information
To TRIUMF communications: The “chocolate fairy” who gave lots of tours of the lab
To the audience of the Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland: One of the people who played physics music with the good pianist
To my friend Felix: That fool who cheers for the Ottawa Senators
To the staff at Romer’s Burger Bar: The scientist who almost never leaves
To my dad: The son who can now run long distances faster than me
To my mom: The son with whom I watch programs about archaeology
To my nephew: The uncle who is silly and swings me in the air
Sakshi Kakkar
Sakshi Kakkar is a PhD student with TITAN (TRIUMF’s Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear science) group, and my research project is related to Measurement Penning Trap (MPET). Originally from India, she was always a curious kid wondering about the diversity in nature and how the laws of physics were just perfect. When introduced to Nuclear & Particle physics in grade 12, Sakshi was astonished to learn about the scale at which we could explore physics, from tiny little sub-atomic particles that we cannot see to the study of stars billions of light years away. That wonder motivated her to take up a project during her undergraduate degree on Silicon strip sensors used in particle colliders, and later continued that work as a Master’s project (in collaboration with University of Delhi and CERN) on characterization and analysis of silicon detectors used for high energy physics experiments. It’s a love for Physics that brought her to Canada to pursue a PhD where she is working on trapping ions of exotic isotopes so that we can precisely measure their mass. High precision and accurate mass measurements are critical inputs to probe into nuclear structure, nucleosynthesis and fundamental interactions.
Dave McKeen
Dave McKeen is a Research Scientist in the TRIUMF theory department. Previously, he was a Samuel P. Langley PITT PACC Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, a postdoc in the particle theory group at the University of Washington and at the University of Victoria. He did his graduate studies in the particle theory group at the University of Chicago. His research interests include dark matter, baryogenesis, collider physics, and hidden or dark sectors. He enjoys model building to connect phenomena in diverse areas of physics. http://inspirehep.net/search?p=find+a+mckeen
David Morrissey
Research Area: particle physics and cosmology (trshare.triumf.ca/~dmorri/)
– Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Related New Physics
– Particle Collider Signatures
– Dark Matter
– Mechanisms of Baryogenesis
Patrick de Perio
Patrick de Perio is conducting research in Neutrino and Dark matter experiments. He is working towards the goal of understanding the evolution of our universe through particle physics experiments on Earth. Here is a link to his profile.
Nirmal Raj Krishna Raj
Nirmal Raj Krishna Raj is a theorist specializing in particle physics. His research is broadly in “Beyond the Standard Model”, viz. ideas that address puzzles and holes in the current best microscopic theory we have for explaining observations in Nature. Of late his work has been on trying to unmask the identity of dark matter, the ubiquitous substance making up most of the matter in the universe. This is his second stint as a postdoctoral student. Before this he was a postdoc at Notre Dame University, having graduated with a PhD from University of Oregon. He has a BTech. in Engineering Physics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
“I’m a bag of electrons, photons, quarks, and gluons. This stuff making up me, you, my physics lab TRIUMF, the rest of Earth, the stars, and everything else visible in telescopes, but is a 15% contaminant to the main raw material that built the universe: dark matter. This substance lurks everywhere, but keeps its identity secret, not for want of prying. Getting to know it may help us understand why the universe exists at all, so I figure out ways in which it can touch “us” and leave a fingerprint, like stealthily shoving atoms in lab containers, or brightening up dead stars.”
