Greetings,
Here in Ontario, we're in another lockdown, so I wanted to start this month's newsletter with a couple of tips to keep healthy and productive – for no matter where you’re located:
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Try to schedule your one-hour meetings for 50 minutes. This gives you a chance to look away from your screen and stretch before your next meeting or task. Your colleagues will be grateful for the opportunity as well.
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If you're working outside of work hours, use delay delivery on the emails you send. I know many of us are keeping irregular schedules to respond to child-care or other scheduling needs. Emails sent outside of work hours can seem urgent, and colleagues may feel pressure to respond.
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Drink water and get outside! Thankfully we're starting to get some nicer weather these days, so make sure you get some fresh air and sunshine. In the words of @PDLComics; "You're basically a houseplant with more complicated emotions."
Also, a reminder to join and check out the Canadian Astroparticle Physics LinkedIn Group. The group is open to anyone involved in the Canadian astroparticle physics community and aims to provide a forum where people can ask questions and have discussions about the various aspects of studying, working, and researching in the field.
Do you have some astroparticle physics news or would like to do a write-up on a recent result or publication? Get in touch and we'll make sure that the community gets to hear your story!
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Institute Partners React to Closure of Laurentian’s Physics Department |
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Last week, Laurentian University announced that the Physics Department will be shut down in May as part of the university’s insolvency restructuring. This directly impacts five astroparticle physics professors who steer the work of more than two dozen graduate students, fellows, technical staff and adjuncts.
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The McDonald Institute has been working with its partners, including Laurentian University, to respond to the abrupt closure of the physics department and subsequent termination of its faculty and staff. The Institute’s Board has convened an emergency meeting to bring university decision-makers together. |
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Scientific Director Tony Noble says that the Board will focus on mitigating negative consequences for astroparticle physics research and training.
“Of course, the loss of the Laurentian physics department is a real setback for our community, which has greatly benefited from having a stable university research hub proximate to SNOLAB,” says Dr. Noble. “I also know that the community of particle astrophysicists in Canada is exceptionally creative and resilient. We will work together to maintain, as much as is possible, the talent, experience and knowledge that Laurentian physicists have laboured to contribute to the national research enterprise.”
Although the specific actions of Canadian particle astrophysics research institutions are not yet settled, Dr. Noble says a wide range of options have been identified that could maintain a hub of university physicists and their graduate students working in Sudbury alongside their SNOLAB colleagues.
"While these parties work as fast as they can to cope with this disruption, I would also encourage the community to be generous in their personal encouragement and support for affected students, staff and faculty at Laurentian. This is an extremely difficult situation, on a professional and personal level, for dozens of our friends and colleagues -- our community of researchers will work together to do all that we can for them.”
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IceCube observes a Glashow resonance event |
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The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the south pole routinely detects high energy neutrino events but has only seen a couple that are over 5 PeV. On December 8, 2016, a 6.3 PeV electron antineutrino interacted with an electron in the Antarctic ice of IceCube to produce a W- boson – an interaction known as the Glashow resonance, which was predicted by Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow in 1960. This detection confirms the 60-year-old theory, and further confirms the Standard Model. The analysis and results were published in Nature on March 10.
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The implications of this event go even further than confirming theory. There are no processes on earth (natural or otherwise) that could create such a high energy antineutrino. This implies IceCube is at the cusp of being able to detect individual astrophysical neutrino events in addition to distinguishing between neutrinos and antineutrinos.
Image right: A visualization of the Glashow event recorded by the IceCube detector. Each coloured circle shows an IceCube sensor that was triggered by the event; red circles indicate sensors triggered earlier in time, and green-blue circles indicate sensors triggered later. This event was nicknamed “Hydrangea.” Credit: IceCube Collaboration
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NSERC Arthur B. McDonald Fellowship awards now open! |
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The Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships recognize early-stage academic researchers in the natural sciences and engineering and support them to enhance their research capacity so that they can become leaders in their field and inspire others. NSERC will award up to six McDonald Fellowships each year.
If your nomination is successful, you will receive a research grant of $250,000 over two years, held at a Canadian university or affiliated research institution. You will also be relieved from teaching and administrative duties so that you can devote your time and energy to research.
If you're interested in submitting a nomination, check with your institution to see if there is an internal nomination process. For many, the deadline to submit expressions of interest to University Research Services is April 26th!
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Book preview: The Disordered Cosmos
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If you’ve been paying any attention to observatory driven investigations of axion dark matter candidates, or the physics community’s reckoning with racism and sexism in the last five years, then you’ve probably already encountered the work University of New Hampshire’s Prof. Chanda Prescod Weinstein. Her work is centred in theoretical particle astrophysics, but also includes major contributions to Black feminist theory as a faculty member in both physics and gender studies. She’s synthesized both fields into a coherent work with her recently published book: The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred.
Disordered Cosmos provides a semi-autobiographical synthesis of Dr. Prescod-Weinstein's academic and popular writing that not only introduces the science novice to the key questions and assumptions of particle physics and cosmology, but also navigates through the racism, sexism and other social pathologies operating in science that degrades its contributions to humanity.
Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, a Black, Jewish, queer and agender feminist astrophysicist, grew up in an activist household where learning about the night sky was a way for her to attempt to depoliticize her world. Disordered Cosmos recounts her discovery that science, as a social enterprise, is neither free of ideology or politics. In the initial chapters, she orients the science novice to the frameworks through which we currently understand the cosmos: the Standard Model, General Relativity and Inflation. She then continues by orienting both novices and practicing scientists to frameworks through which people are either included, excluded, supported or abused within the physics enterprise: Racism, Patriarchy, Settler-Colonialism. From her recounting of the obfuscation of “good seeing” in the city, and the Indigenous rights issues at Mauna Kea, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein frankly considers the demoralizing aspects of her life in academia, as well as instances of much-needed encouragement and respect.
Generating substantial impact in both physics and social theory simultaneously is reason to pay attention to anyone working in the physics community. But Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is doing much more than exhibiting her knowledge of both fields. She is putting these fields of inquiry into deep conversation with each other without losing the substance of one for the sake of speaking to the other.
Disordered Cosmos makes for intellectually approachable, if emotionally challenging reading, especially for the scientist who imagines life and work in a logical, merit-driven world. It is a helpful book for the student who loves physics, but is wary of its long-running social barriers and hierarchies. It is a challenging book for the career physicist who struggles to understand how the scientific pecking order could depend on anything other than merit. It is an illustrative book to the social theorist who wonders to what extent differential, identity-mediated structures of power constrain our collective ability to create, imagine and know the world we inhabit.
When we’re doing science, we are also doing many other things -- some of which cause or perpetuate harm. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is breaking fresh ground in her examination of the concurrent action of science-as-discovery and science-as-a-social-enterprise. Disordered Cosmos is a valuable contribution to sociology of scientific knowledge studies, authored by a uniquely qualified author with first-hand experience of the harsh consequences of the physics world’s socio-structural flaws.
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Self-Guided Professional Development and Learning EDII Series
A reminder that the self-guided modules for enhancing your equity, diversity, inclusion and Indigenization (EDII) competencies are now available. These opportunities are open to students, staff, and faculty affiliated with the McDonald Institute. We thank our partners at the Human Rights and Equity Office (Queen’s University) for providing this training to the network!
The following opportunities are available:
- Introduction to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
- Power, Bias, and Privilege
- Unconscious Bias
- Conversations on Decolonization
- Navigating Difficult Conversations
- Inclusive and Responsive Teaching
- Call it Out
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Previously Recorded Sessions now available
We have updated the Professional Development and Learning series website to improve navigation and provide access to previously recorded sessions. Further sessions will be added, so be sure to check in with the website in the future!
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The 3rd Summer Particle Astrophysics Workshop is an 8-day introductory workshop from May 4th to Thursday, May 13th for undergraduate and new graduate students entering the field of particle physics. This workshop is meant to onboard summer students to an analysis-capable state for their own research.
The workshop will feature introductory lectures and coding activities led by faculty, post-docs and senior graduate students. Any individuals interested are welcome to join for any or all of the workshop.
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This year's workshop is organized by members of the McDonald Institute's Highly Qualified Personnel and its Advisory Committee. For more information, please contact Benjamin Tam at [email protected].
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This group is open to anyone involved in the Canadian astroparticle physics community and aims to provide a space to ask questions and have discussions about the various aspects of studying, working, and researching in the field. In the spirit of the Discord platform, there are also channels to share pictures of your pets and other social
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Opportunities
Canada Research Chair (CRC) Tier 2 and Assistant Professor of Astroparticle Physics
University of Alberta
May 31, 2021
Postdoctoral position in the DEAP and DarkSide-20k experiments
Queen’s University
Review of applications begins 1 June 2021, and the opportunity will remain available until filled.
Two SuperCDMS Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Toronto
Review of applications will commence on 15 Apr. 2021, and the opportunity will remain available until filled.
SNOLAB
Review of applications will commence on 7 May 2021, and the opportunity will remain available until filled.
Please consider submitting opportunities to [email protected] so we can share them with the community.
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SOLAB Seminar Series
May 17: Dr. Aldo Ianni (INFN-LNGS) High sensitivity characterization of a NaI(Tl) scintillator for dark matter direct search
May 31: Dr Bjoern Lehnert (LBL) KATRIN experiment
SNOLAB Seminars are typically held on Mondays at 1:00 pm Eastern Time. For connection details, please contact Silvia Scorza at [email protected].
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The McDonald Institute YouTube Channel |
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Thank you for your continued interest in the Canadian astroparticle physics community.
If you would like to view past newsletters from the McDonald Institute, please visit the: Newsletter Archive.
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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 the traditional territories where astroparticle physicists are grateful to live and work across Canada.
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Join us on our social media channels |
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