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Welcome to the June newsletter, our last newsletter of the academic year! We hope to see many of you this summer at Women+ In Physics Canada and the McDonald Institute Annual Community Meeting, and we’ll be back with our monthly newsletter in September!
As we prepare for a new academic year, the McDonald Institute Highly Qualified Personnel Advisory Committee (HQPAC) is seeking new members! Grad students and Postdocs interested in community development, network building, and professional development should contact hqpac@mcdonaldinstitute.ca or attend the Committee’s Town Hall meeting on July 7th. We ask that Faculty and Supervisors encourage their students to participate and welcome any student recommendations/nominations.
Upcoming:
MI HQP Seminar Series:
June 25, 3:00-4:00 PM ET William Woodley, University of Alberta
"PICO: A Bubble Chamber Approach to Dark Matter Detection.”
A Zoom link will be sent via the Astroparticle Physics HQP Mailing list. Join the list here.
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We're thrilled to announce that REGISTRATION IS OPEN for the Women+ in Physics Canada 2025 Conference at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, July 22-25, 2025!
This conference platform aims to amplify the scientific contributions of women, gender minorities, and their allies to share research, network, and expand professionally in the field of physics. Conference delegates will have the opportunity to build networks, explore career paths, and present research while also promoting conversations about gender equity in physics.
For more information, visit the Conference Website.
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Neutrino GeoScience Conference - Call for Abstracts
Neutrino Geoscience 2025, hosted by Queen's University and the McDonald Institute, will be a workshop during which both geoneutrinos and multi-messenger tomography of the Earth will be explored and discussed. It follows from past conferences and workshops – most recently Neutrino Geoscience 2019 Prague and the second Workshop on Multi-Messenger Tomography of the Earth 2023 Paris.
The Call for abstracts is currently open. Visit the conference website for more information.
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Agenda Details for Canadian Astroparticle Physics Annual Community Meeting:
The full agenda for the Canadian Astroparticle Physics Annual Community Meeting at Carleton University will be published this week. Space is still available for registrants. The annual meeting, to be held Aug. 6-8, draws together faculty, fellows, technicians, engineers, and students working across the entire breadth of theoretical and experimental astroparticle physics with significant Canadian participation. The meeting also includes a one-day, Aug. 5 professional development workshop for HQP (Highly Qualified Personnel) that will feature sessions on career networking in this year’s iteration.
Research talks Aug. 6, 7, and 8 will cover dark matter and neutrino detectors, theory, neutral particles, high-energy experiments, along with a special panel discussion on 0νββ detection. These talks will span IceCube, P-ONE, HELIX, DEAP, NEWS-G, new Xe doping methods, BSM theory, SNO+, nEXO, MATHUSLA, PICO, SBC, and SuperCDMS. Special presentations from SNOLAB, TRIUMF, IPP and the McDonald Institute will update on their respective community consultations and future initiatives planning. Special panels will address the state of international research collaborations and EDII strategies in a changing geopolitical environment. The McDonald Institute will also present updates on its suite of programming supports and detail its future direction. The McDonald Institute will host a special social and dinner event on the evening of August 7 at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Attendees will enjoy a private reception and viewing in the museum's artifact gallery before dinner in the museum’s banquet room.
HQP workshops on Aug. 5 will focus on academic and post-academic career preparation, including a panel of astroparticle physics alumni reflecting on their journeys from academia to industry, networking opportunities with alumni, a special session by Canadian Journal of Physics on the realities and ethical considerations affecting (massively) multi-authored papers, and instructive activities to help HQP forge useful and resilient referral networks.
The regular meeting will feature research updates on key experimental collaborations, new theory work, and the Institute will provide residence room accommodations free of charge for students, technicians, and postdoctoral fellows to support their participation in any part of the workshop and meeting. Faculty and career scientists are also welcome to request residence rooms, at cost, through the registration link.
Registration for both the workshop and the regular meeting is now open. Secure your spot at https://indico.global/event/14027/ at
https://indico.global/event/14027/
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The 24th International Workshop on Next Generation Nucleon Decay and Neutrino Detectors (NNN25) will be held in Sudbury from Monday, September 29 to Friday, October 3, 2025.
The workshop location will be split between host SNOLAB (pre-workshop Monday and Tuesday, hosted by McGill University) and the main workshop in downtown Sudbury’s Places des Arts (from Wednesday to Friday). The main physics topics at NNN25 will include: searches for proton decay, CP violation in the lepton sector, determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy, and observation of neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae.
NNN25 is jointly organized by SNOLAB, the McDonald Institute, and McGill University.
Over the last 25 years, the NNN series of workshops has provided the international community with a forum for in-depth discussions on future large-scale detectors for research on nucleon decay and neutrino physics, since its inaugural workshop in 1999 at Stony Brook, NY.
More information and a call for abstracts (now open) can be found here.
https://indico.snolab.ca/event/21/overview
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Welcoming Ray Bunker to SNOLAB
SNOLAB is pleased to announce that Dr. Ray Bunker has been recruited as its
new director of research. As research director, Bunker will lead SNOLAB’s award-winning
teams of research scientists, scientific support staff, and project managers.
Bunker comes to SNOLAB from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where he has been a research scientist for nearly 10 years. His expertise and research experience include dark matter experimentation, radiation detection (especially radon), quantum information science, and low-temperature physics.
Farewell and Many Thanks to Jeter Hall
Bunker replaces Dr. Jeter Hall, who served as director of research at SNOLAB for more than seven years. Hall is leaving SNOLAB this summer to take up his new role as executive director of the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation in Saskatoon. “Jeter has been instrumental in SNOLAB’s many successes in his time at SNOLAB,” says SNOLAB Executive Director Dr. Jodi Cooley. “Beyond SNOLAB, Jeter has shown valuable leadership within Canada’s physics and science communities, and I know he will continue to lead by example in his new role.”
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Richard Bond Co-Awarded 2025 Shaw Prize.
The 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy has been jointly awarded to Professor Richard Bond at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and the University of Toronto, Canada and George Efstathiou, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, for their seminal research in cosmology, including studies of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.
CITA Communications and Events Coordinator, Lyuba Encheva writes,
This work has allowed scientists to confirm that the universe’s geometry is nearly flat, meaning that the curvature of space-time is essentially zero, determine its age to within 0.15% (approximately 13.8 billion years), measure its expansion rate with 0.5% precision, and quantify the amount of mysterious dark energy to better than 1%.
Beyond his seminal CMB work, Professor Bond has made other profound contributions recognized by the Shaw Prize. He co-introduced the concept of the “cosmic web”— the vast network of filaments connecting galaxies and galaxy clusters. He also developed key mathematical theories for understanding how galaxies cluster and made fundamental contributions to understanding the inflationary phase of the very early universe.
Read the full story here.
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Indigenous art and science project
The McDonald Institute, in partnership with the Queen's University Office of Indigenous Initiatives and Queen’s Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy, are currently seeking one or more Indigenous artists to bring an Indigenous perspective to the physics topics of focus at the McDonald Institute and Queen’s University.
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We hope to provide a way for students and visitors to engage in astroparticle physics visually, through an Indigenous lens and offer an alternative to the more traditional [western] scientific exhibits in Stirling Hall.
If you know any artists who might be interested in applying, please share!
https://mcdonaldinstitute.ca/indigenous-art-science/
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Card Game Submissions!
If you haven’t made yourself a card for the Astroparticle Physics Card Game, now’s your chance! The game’s first official printing will be in July, and we want as many members of our community to be in the game as possible! The cards will be given out to new and current students and postdocs in the Fall. Check out the project website and the section about creating cards, and contact zachary.kenny@mcdonaldinstitute.ca if you have any questions.
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Our newsletter provides the astroparticle physics community with updates, programs, and opportunities and we want to help share your story! We invite all members of the community to contribute to this newsletter.
The McDonald Institute at Queen’s University is situated in the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee First Nations. The Institute is part of a national network of institutions and research centres which operate in other traditional Indigenous territories. Visit www.whose.land to learn about the traditional territories where astroparticle physicists are grateful to live and work across Canada.
Thank you for your support. If you would like to view past newsletters from the McDonald Institute, please visit the Newsletter Archive.
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