SNOLAB hosts record Canadian Astroparticle Summer Student Talk Symposium

The 6th annual Canadian Astroparticle Summer Student Talk Symposium (CASST), hosted by SNOLAB last week, attracted a record 54 undergraduate and two high school students from across Canada. 

The friendly competition gives undergrad physics students an opportunity to present their summer work projects to fellow students and a panel of judges. Winners are given the opportunity to attend and present at the annual Canadian Association of Physicists Congress held every summer. 

SNOLAB hosts three student talk symposiums every year, one for every cohort of students working at SNOLAB. The symposiums are opportunities for students to show off accomplishments from their work term and to practice giving presentations in a supportive and professional environment, no matter their field of study. 

The summer symposium, CASST, is opened up to students from across Canada. The two-day summer symposium is also an opportunity to offer a career panel, networking workshops, and fun science education activities.  

This year’s CASST symposium was the strongest yet, says SNOLAB Director of Research, and one of the judges, Dr. Ray Bunker.  

“Students brought us an impressive breadth of topics and a wealth of knowledge,” Bunker said. “It was inspiring to see so much enthusiasm and so many excellent science talks—made it challenging to pick winners.” 

CASST coordinator and SNOLAB research scientist Christine Kraus said the students shined in both their presentations and workshops. 

“The amount of work and quality of talks presented was truly amazing and we also had great participation in the workshops for professional development,” Kraus said.  

“Students were giving one hour to come up with demonstration for a basic physics principle and they were all wonderful.” 

This year’s first place talk was given by Qwin Goodwin from Queen’s University for the talk titled The Search for Galaxies Without Stars: HI Follow-up for FASHI Dark Galaxy Candidates. 

Second place went to Justine Thébault-Weiser from McGill University for the talk Optimizing the Ablation and Selection of Li-7 Ions for Implanting in Quantum Sensors. 

Third place went to Ahmed Abdel-Dayem, a student at Laurentian University and a SNOLAB information technology student, for the talk Engineering World-Class Collaboration Infrastructure at SNOLAB: Modernization of the Fraser Duncan Auditorium Control System. 

Fourth place went to Cameron Flaman from McGill University for the talk Building a Peltier-Cooled Cloud Chamber for Physics Outreach. 

Fifth place went to Sara Bergevin from Queen’s University for the talk Properties of the SNO+ Detector from Optical Calibration Data. 

Honourable mentions went to Julia Brachman, Guneev Dhillon, Driss Mestiri, Cheyanne Monk, and Elspeth Bruce. Qwin Goodwin and Sara Bergevin were chosen to travel to the 2027 CAP Congress to present their talks there. 

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