Third annual Canadian Astroparticle Summer Student Talk Competition another success

The third annual Canadian Astroparticle Summer Student Talk Competition took place last week. Two full days brought together 24 undergraduate students from across Canada and around the world. Participants were global with students from India and Mexico bringing together students from many different institutions.

Participating students also enjoyed several workshops that ranged from EDI to networking. SNOLAB Research Scientist Dr. Erica Caden introduced a community art project where all participants, both audience and students, shared what inspires them most about science by drawing it on a piece of fabric. This was later pinned and will be sewn together to become the CASST 2023 community quilt. Later that evening, Dr. Hoi Cheu of Laurentian University presented an engaging show in the Doran Planetarium. 

This year’s first place prize was earned by Ashley Ferreira (University of Waterloo) for her outstanding talk titled “Deeply Learning the Position Reconstruction of Antihydrogen Annihilations in ALPHA-g”. This summer she was supervised by Dr. Makoto Fujiwara at TRIUMF. 

The second place prize was awarded to Myla Weiman (University of Waterloo), who just completed her first year of her undergraduate studies. Her talk this year was titled “Adding Bis-MSB in the SNO+ Detector: Boosting the Light Yield One Batch at a Time”.

Third place was given to Yusuf Ahmed (University of Waterloo), who finished his studies this spring. He was awarded for his talk: “Improving radon assays using activated charcoal”.

4^th place was awarded to Kristofer Karam (Université de Montréal), 5^th place to Aditya Chugh (University of Toronto) (not pictured), and 6^th place to Lauren Fearn (University of Waterloo).

Honourable mentions were given to Maxwell Bridgewater (University of Toronto) and Maggie Oxford (Queen’s University).

Competitors also had the chance to earn a spot that will allow them to compete at the student talk competition at the CAP Congress in 2024 that will take place at Western University. The winners this year are Ashley Ferreira and Yusuf Ahmed. This opportunity to present their work to physicists across Canada is sponsored by McDonald Institute and SNOLAB.

We extend our congratulations to all the participants of this year’s CASST competition and look forward to another great competition next year.