SNOLAB hosts 4th annual Canadian Astroparticle Summer Student Talk Competition

The 4th annual Canadian Astroparticle Summer Student Talk Competition, hosted jointly by McDonald Institute and SNOLAB, was held early last week and was another beaming success. This two-day competition saw 44 undergraduate students compete from across the globe, ranging from Turkey to Mexico, on various topics in astroparticle physics.

Students had the opportunity to attend several workshops on diverse topics. One networking-based workshop included a new networking game, created by McDonald Institute, that involved students networking with one another by swapping custom trading cards of themselves. Another workshop, led by the McDonald Institute was focused on effectively communicating science. Other workshops focused on EDI and another that had a career panel with panelists from a variety of backgrounds and educations to provide insight on different paths that people working in physics have taken.

This year’s first place talk was awarded to Gabrielle Barsky-Giles of Queen’s University for her exceptional talk titled “Studies on the temperature dependent drift velocity for the HELIX Drift Chamber Tracker”.

The second place prize was earned by Joshua Himmens, who spent his summer term at TRIUMF working on the ATLAS experiment. His talk was titled “Developing Machine Learning Techniques for Particle Flow in the ATLAS Experiment”.

Third place was given to Matt Poser, who just completed his second year of undergraduate studies at Queen’s University. His talk at this year’s competition was “Flasher Events; The Analysis of a Potentially Problematic Background in the DEAP3600 Dark Matter Search”.

This year’s fourth place was awarded to Grace Champagne, who just completed her second year in her undergraduate program. She presented her talk titled “Stepping Up Precision: Automated SiPM Characterization for the nEXO Experiment”.

The honourable mentions from this year were presented to Kaan Sun (Queen’s University), Justin Suys (University of Ottawa), Katharine Jekic (Queen’s University), and Emma Greenall (Queen’s University).

The competitors also had the opportunity to earn a funded trip to compete at the student talk competition at the 2025 CAP congress that will take place at the University of Saskatchewan. This prize was earned by Gabrielle Barsky-Giles and Justin Suys. This award is sponsored by McDonald Institute and SNOLAB and will allow the winners to share their work with physicists across Canada.

Congratulations to all competitors on their hard work that was showcased at this year’s talk competition. We look forward to hosting another great CASST competition next year!