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Departmental News

Malcolm Stott Teaching Award Winners for 2019-2020

TA winners of 2019-2020, Dominic Rochfort and Dhruv Bisaria

Dominic Rochfort (left) and Dhruv Bisaria

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Dr. Peter Willis and Bioanalytical Chemistry on Mars

Dr. Peter Willis, an alumni of the Chemistry Physics program (1994), has been one of the scientists in designing Mars Rovers at NASA. His bioanalytical tool box is being used by Perseverance Rover currently on Mars.

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Kyle Singer and his Team shine at the Canadian Engineering Competition

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Let's Talk Astrophysics Symposium

About the Let's Talk Astrophysics Symposium and a summary of the two day event from Benjamin Tam, founder of IDEAS Initiative.

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Queen's Observatory Perseverance Rover landing party with a panel of 4 experts - livestream

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Professor Bhavin Shastri's review article appears in the prestigious Nature Photonics

Professor Bhavin Shastri's article Photonics for artificial intelligence and neuromorphic computing appears in the prestigious Nature Photonics Journal.

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Justin Bonal and his Team Advance to the Canadian Engineering Competition

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Kyle Singer and his Team Advance to the Canadian Engineering Competition

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Professor Jean-Michel Nunzi to present Photonics for Life at 2021 SWITCH event

Professor Jean-Michel Nunzi to present Photonics for Life at 2021 SWITCH event.

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Professor Stephen Hughes selected for a JSPS Invitational Fellowship for Research

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Physics News & Events in Photos

Congratulations Kyle (Eng Phys) and to your team for placing second in the programming category at the Canadian Engineering Competition held at the University of New Brunswick! See the full story.

Team members from left to right: Joseph Grosso, Andrew Farley, Kyle Singer, Andrew Fryer
(photo courtesy of Kyle Singer)
The Division for Gender Equity in Physics of the Canadian Association of Physicist has presented the DGEP Best Student Poster Presentation Prize to Annie Xie in recognition of an outstanding undergraduate student research paper presented at CCUWIP 2021. The prize consists of a cash award of $100, and free registration for the CAP Virtual Congress 2021.

Poster Title: Streamlining The Testing Process of Photonic Chips
Congratulations to our Engineering Physics students Kyle Singer and Justin Bonal and their teams for performing so well at the Ontario Engineering Competition which took place on Jan 22 to Jan 24th. Both teams will move on to the Canadian Engineering Competition in late February.
Physics PhD Candidate Connor Stone describes what the chemical phosphine is, and why it is significant in the study of potential life on Venus.

Watch the video on Discovery Canada on Twitter.

News Source from the Queen's Gazette.
Prof. Widrow and his collaborators discover, for the first time, evidence of shell-like structures in the Milky Way.

This image is a snapshot from a simulation of a merger between a dwarf galaxy and a model of the Milky Way. The snapshot is taken 2.5 billion years after the collision. The perspective is from the centre of the Galaxy with stars that reside in shells highlighted. Please see enlarged image.

The full simulation can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asXp4-9ZnmU.
(Image courtesy of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of NY)
Physics PhD candidate Troy Allen received the Best Presentation Award among all speakers at the 4-day 11th CIRP Conference in Photonics Technologies ("LANE 2020", Germany). He receives € 1,000 and an invitation to present in the plenary session at LANE 2022. Troy's talk was titled Simultaneous in operando monitoring of keyhole depth and absorptance in laser processing of AISI 316 stainless steel at 200 kHz. Congratulations Troy!
Prof. Bhavin J. Shastri was awarded the 2020 Young Scientist Prize in Optics "for his pioneering contributions to Neuromorphic Photonics" by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) through The International Commission of Optics (ICO).
Dr. Judith Irwin (Principal Investigator) and her colleagues/members from project CHANG-ES (Continuum HAlos in Nearby Galaxies - an EVLA Survey) have released a Radio/Optical composite image of the galaxy NGC 4217, a star forming, spiral galaxy. For more information about the exciting image results, please visit Magnetic Field of a Spiral Galaxy. Please hover over the image for credits.
The Canadian Association of Physicists Annual Congress was held virtually this year but still had student competitions. Congratulations to Lilianna Hariasz and Alex Inayeh who both placed first in their divisions for their oral presentations!

More info can be found at Best Student Oral Competition Awards.
Toast to the Physics Graduates of 2020!!
Huge congratulations goes to the 24 students who graduated with a BSc in Physics this Spring!

To view a larger image, please click Toast to the Physics Grads of June 2020.

(Photo credit: Prof. Rob Knobel)
For more information about the TA Excellence Award, visit ASUS on Facebook.

(Image from ASUS Facebook)
Like a beloved book or movie that you hope has a sequel, the most successful scientific projects cry out for a second act. That is just what has happened to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), which over the last decade has reinvented itself as SNO+, led by Mark Chen, the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics, a project that has taken advantage of a unique piece of research infrastructure and set it on a new mission. Continue the story on the Research@Queen’s website.

(Illustration by: Gary Neill, photo of Prof. Chen courtesy of University Relations – Integrated Communications)
Dr. Judith Irwin (Principal Investigator) and her colleagues/members from project CHANG-ES (Continuum HAlos in Nearby Galaxies - an EVLA Survey) have released a composite image of the galaxy NGC 4631, the "Whale Galaxy", revealing large magnetic structures.

For more information about the exciting image results, please visit Giant Magnetic Ropes in a Galaxy's Halo. Hover over image for credits.
Celebrating Sci Formal in a classy manner, pictured here are some of our amazing Eng Physics students, class of 2020.

(Photo credit: Matthew Filipovich)
Professors Gerbier, Rau and Noble are particle astrophysics researchers on the hunt for dark matter! They are "playing key roles in large collaborative teams of Canadian and international researchers conducting three competing, but complementary experiments that use different tools to seek, find and ultimately understand the nature of dark matter". For more information on the hunt, please visit Dark Matter Detectives.

(Illustrations by Zachary Kenny)
Queen's-associated female astrophysicists. Queen's long history of promoting women in astrophysics goes back to Allie Vibert Douglas, who was an astronomer and a pioneer in the teaching of astrophysics - see https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/alumnireview/stories/allie-vibert-douglas

Please hover over the image for names of Queen's-associated female astrophysicists. (Photo credit: David van Vliet)
Engineering Physics student Sarah Choudhury created the smallest Queen's logo ever (67 microns long, smallest features 18 nanometres wide) using electron beam lithography and metal deposition. This work was done at Nano Fabrication Kingston where Queen's researchers make big discoveries about small things.

For more images, please click on Small Images.
Dr. Bhavin Shastri was interviewed by The Optical Society (OSA) about his research in silicon photonic for neuromorphic computing and artificial intelligence, and shares his excitement about working with his students at Queen's University.

Please click on Shastri Lab to watch the interview.
The Queen's Hyperloop Design Team (which has a number of Engineering Physics members, including Matthew Filipovich pictured here draped in the Queen's flag, beside Elon Musk) competed in the 2019 Hyperloop Pod Competition hosted by SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. For more information you can visit https://queenshyperloop.ca/.

Visit QHDT at the 2019 Hyperloop Pod Competition for more photos and access other media coverage. (Photo courtesy of M. Filipovich)
A huge congratulations to graduating Physics student Erin Avryl Crawley for the four medals: The Governor General's Academic Medal for the highest academic standing in a Bachelor degree program at Queen's, The Prince of Wales Prize for the highest academic record in the Faculty of Arts and Science, the Medal in Mathematics and Statistics, and the Medal in Physics.

Erin with her parents and Prof. Marc Dignam, Physics Department Head. (Photo courtesy of Prof. Dignam)
Congratulations to the Arts & Science Physics Graduates of 2019!

(Photo courtesy of Prof. Fraser)
Graduate student Ingrida Semenec (centre) tests out the van de Graaf generator as she and graduate students Liz Fletcher (left) and Ben Tam (right) help to set up for the annual Science Rendezvous Kingston outreach event. Researchers from the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy contributed three interactive displays to the event, which welcomed over 5200 budding scientists and their families to the Leon’s Centre in Kingston, Ontario.

(Photo courtesy of Prof. Wright)
The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Sport, was at Queen's yesterday to announce that more than 90 Queen’s University researchers, including faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows, are the beneficiaries of $4.6 million from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Shown left to right: Ted Hsu, Prof. Stéphane Courteau (Physics), The Honourable Minister of Science and Sport Kirsty Duncan, and Prof. Mark Chen (Physics and Gray Chair).
(Photo by Bernard Clark)
Congratulations Prof. Knobel for receiving the Dean Nathan F. Dupuis Leadership in Engineering Education Award, a one-time prize presented to a deserving faculty member by the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science in recognition of the 125th anniversary of engineering education at Queen’s.

For more information, please visit Prof. Knobel's Award.

(Photo credit: Queen's Gazette)
Huge congratulations goes to Prof. Hughes who received a prestigious Humboldt Research Award for his outstanding research!

For more information, please visit Queen's Gazette. (Photo credit: Queen's Gazette)
Proving that research is a team effort, past and present Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) employees and their family members gather around the plinth.

For more information, visit Commemorating the Nobel Prize-winning Research.
(University Communications)
Dr. Webster, who is a graduate of Queen's Engineering Physics, developed the key Laser Depth Dynamics (LDD) technology called Inline Coherent Imaging (ICI) during his PhD under the supervision of Prof. James Fraser. For more information about the purchase of LDD, please visit Inline Coherent Imaging Goes Global.

(Image:University Communications Queen's Gazette)
Congratulations! The first CFI grant, lead by Prof. Noble, will be used to build a next generation detector, PICO 500L, that will search for dark matter, while the second grant, lead by Profs. Hughes and Fraser, will be used to establish the Queen’s Nanophotonics Research Centre, which will explore the behaviour of light and light-matter interactions on the nanometre scale.

See full article on Queen's Gazette. (Photo credit: Queen's Gazette)
Celebrating Professor James Fraser's induction to prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowship. From left to right, Provost Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Director-Centre for Teaching & Learning Peter Wolf, Department Head Marc Dignam, Prof. James Fraser.

(Photo: Queen's Gazette)
SNOLAB receives $28.8 million in provincial funding from Minister of Research, Innovation and Science, Reza Moridi (center).

(Photo credit:Queen's Gazette)
Congratulations to professor emeritus Arthur McDonald and the entire SNO Collaboration who have been awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics! The $ 3 million prize is shared with four other international experimental collaborations studying neutrino oscillations: The Superkamiokande, Kamland, T2K/K2K and Daya Bay scientific collaborations.

(Background image: Roy Kaltschmidt from LBL)
Congratulations to professor emeritus Arthur McDonald, the co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics!
(Background image: Roy Kaltschmidt from LBL)