Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference - CUPC 2019

Photos from the event!

We are pleased to introduce Dr. Michael Ramsey-Musolf as one of our diversity panelists for CUPC 2019!

“Michael Ramsey-Musolf is a theoretical physicist whose research lies at the interface of particle physics, nuclear physics, and cosmology. He is currently Chair Professor at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a Senior Fellow at the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, and Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding Director of the Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions. He is best known for his research on the cosmic matter-antimatter asymmetry and fundamental symmetry tests. Prof. Ramsey-Musolf received his B.A. from Pomona College and Ph.D. from Princeton University. After completing a post-doc at MIT, he held faculty positions at Old Dominion University and the Jefferson Lab, the Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Connecticut, Caltech, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison before assuming his current positions. He received the 1990 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics from the American Physical Society and has been an APS Fellow since 2001. Since 2012, he has worked with colleagues to increase awareness of LGBTQ concerns in physics through the grassroots organization lgbt+physicists. He is also an ordained Episcopal priest, and continues to serve as the Priest Associate for Global Mission at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Northampton, MA.”

We are pleased to introduce Dr. Donna Strickland as one of our keynote speakers for CUPC 2019!

"Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for
developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester in New York state. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created. The research has several applications
today in industry and medicine — including the cutting of a patient’s cornea in laser eye surgery, and the machining of small glass parts for use in cell phones.

Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a member of technical staff at Princeton University. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. She is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Premier’s Research Excellence Award and a Cottrell Scholar Award. She served as the president of the Optical Society (OSA) in 2013 and is a fellow of OSA and SPIE (International Society for Optics and Photonics). Strickland is an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and holds numerous honorary doctorates.

Strickland earned a PhD in optics from the University of Rochester and a B.Eng. from
McMaster University."

We are pleased to introduce Marie-Christine Ferland as one of our career panelists for CUPC 2019!

“Marie-Christine Ferland is the general manager of Optonique, Quebec’s cluster of excellence in optics-photonics. She and her team organize activities ranging from trade missions to networking events. She has been working for more than 10 years in business development for renowned photonics organizations such as INO and Leddartech. She also served on the boards of directors of several associations and held the position of Vice-President Innovative Manufacturer at Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, an association that helps manufacturers grow.”

We are pleased to introduce Dr. Marie-Cécile Piro as one of our diversity panelists for CUPC 2019!

“Dr. Piro is a french-italo-canadian who grew up in a tiny french island in the Caribbean the Guadeloupe. She moved in Montreal for her undergraduate and graduate studies at Université de Montréal and received her PhD in 2012 in experimental particle physics in the PICASSO collaboration using superheated liquid detectors for the search of dark matter. She continued her quest of dark matter as a postdoctoral associate in France within the EDELWEISS group working with High Purity Germanium (HPGe) bolometer. She moved in US to work as a research associate with the XENON1T experiment and spent two year in Gran Sasso in Italy for the complete commissioning of the detector, as expert on-site of the purification system for the experiment. Dr. Piro is now Assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton since 2017 and she continues her search as a leader in the dark matter searches within several experiments in gas purification to reduce the background level of the detectors and data analysis to understand the behavior of the detectors. Combining technologies and disciplines for developing new detectors and extract the interesting signals in order to solve the mysteries of the Universe is her main interest.”

We are pleased to introduce Dr. John Kildea as one of our career panelists for CUPC 2019!

“John Kildea is a medical physicist at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in Montreal and assistant professor in oncology at McGill University.
Dr. Kildea’s background is in astrophysics, with a PhD in high-energy astrophysics from University College Dublin and postdocs at McGill and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He transitioned into Medical Physics in 2010 and worked for seven years as a clinical medical physicist at the MUHC before joining McGill’s Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology as an academic assistant professor in 2017.
As a medical physicist, Dr. Kildea’s research interests include neutron-induced carcinogenesis, quality and safety in radiation oncology, and health informatics. Dr. Kildea is vice-chair of the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy, an alliance of the national professional associations involved in Canadian radiation oncology. Together with Dr. Tarek Hijal, Dr. Kildea co-leads the Opal patient portal project in Quebec (opalmedapps.com). Opal is currently in use at the MUHC and is being expanded to five other cancer centres in Montreal.”

We are pleased to introduce Dr. H. Cynthia Chiang as one of our diversity panelists for CUPC 2019!

“H. Cynthia Chiang is an associate professor of physics at McGill University, and her research focuses on instrumentation development and data analysis for observational cosmology. She was previously a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, a Dicke postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, and she also spent one year working at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station as a winterover scientist. She received her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2009, working on cosmic microwave background polarimetry. She received her BS in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002.”

We are pleased to introduce Dr. Kimberly Girling as one of our career panelists for CUPC 2019!

“Kimberly Girling started her career as a scientist, earning a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia where she developed novel therapeutics for Huntington's Disease, a neurodegenerative illness. During her work in science, she learned that good science must move beyond the bench, linking evidence to effective policies and accessible products. To this end, Kimberly developed a passion for science policy, leading her to work on a number of initiatives relating to health and drug policy, including work with the UBC Neglected Global Diseases Initiative, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. In 2016, Kimberly was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellowship. She completed her fellowship with Defence Research and Development Canada, where she developed a new framework to identify ethical and policy barriers to the use of emerging technologies for human enhancement in the military. She has also worked as a policy analyst at Innovation, Science and Economic Development. As of January 2019, Kimberly is the Research and Policy Director at Evidence for Democracy, an Ottawa-based non-profit that promotes the transparent use of evidence in government decision-making.”