SNOLAB summer students present at annual talk competition

Each year, SNOLAB and Laurentian University hold a summer student talk competition for the students who spent their summer working at SNOLAB. This year looked a little bit different with students and staff working remotely, but we are proud to have hosted a record number of 23 students.

The talk competition provides students an opportunity to share what they worked on over the summer and to practice their scientific presentation skills. It was especially valuable this year, as many of the students had never met face-to-face with one another or with many members of the SNOLAB community.

This year’s talks took place on Friday, August 21st via videoconference, chaired by a group of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. The students presented on topics from physics, engineering, human resources, and science communication. This year’s talks were exceptionally well-prepared and engaging, bringing one another up to speed on the research and projects they’d worked on.

First prize went to Adam Glustein from University of Toronto engineering for his presentation on cascade corrections for the high purity germanium detectors in SNOLAB’s low background lab. Second prize went to William Rettie from the University of Ottawa, presenting on the health of the neutral current detectors on HALO. Third prize this year went to Ali Davies from the University of British Columbia for her presentation on the relevance of radon at SNOLAB.

Honourable mentions went to Melissa Baiocchi of McMaster University mechanical engineering and computer science and Bakr Emara from Laurentian University engineering.

This year, we also had the pleasure of having a secondary student, Sarah Poulin, join us to share her experience of building a cloud chamber, one of the oldest types of particle detectors.

Congratulations to all of the students who presented. Thank you to the team of judges and to all who were in attendance.