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Queen's Particle Astrophysics - Students

Students have a critical role and often find themselves at the center of the most important collaboration activities. A large collaborative experiment is a collection of hundreds of smaller experiments, with a common physics goal and central organization. Those small experiments need to be done by a few people, and are not too different from experiments done in smaller in-house facilities. Students concerned about this should read through the past graduate student thesis topics listed at the end of this section.

 
Chanpreet Amole

Chanpreet Amole (contact)

I am currently working on the direct detection of Dark Matter with the PICO collaboration. So far, I have been involved and taken a lead in various tasks related to hardware design/assembly, experimental operations and data analysis in the PICO experiment that is deployed in SNOLAB underground laboratory. Prior to this, I did my masters at York University and worked in CERN on the ALPHA experiment (anti-hydrogen production/trapping) to study fundamental symmetries between matter and antimatter.

 
Yan Liu

(contact) Yan Liu

I'm a master student currently working on SNO+ experiment. My work right now is mainly concerned with 'finishing' fabrication of umbilicals (remember to thank me for doing this when you came here...) & 'starting' data flow. I'm also responsible for developing sodium source for liquid scintillator phase.

 
Ryan Underwood

Ryan Underwood (contact)

I am a student working with SuperCDMS, my work so far has consisted of assessing a two-template fitting model for phonon pulses that come out of the detector. I have also done research at CERN, and in modelling relativistic supernova shock propagation.

 
Francisco Vazquez de Sola Fernandez

(contact) Francisco Vazquez de Sola Fernandez

I am a PhD student, currently working on dark matter detection with NEWS-G. My focus has been mostly on data analysis, especially on understanding the pulse shape of our events for better characterization. I am now working on extracting a limit on solar KK axions using the data from the previous NEWS-G experiment in the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane.

 
Caleb Miller

Caleb Miller (contact)

I work on the SNO+ experiment, and I am currently working on scintillator purification and radon background modeling.

 
Muad Ghaith

(contact) Muad Ghaith

I am a master student currently working in SuperCDMS. The main aim of the experiment is to measure the recoil energy out of the nucleus due to collision with Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) using highly sensitive detectors.

 
Derek Cranshaw

Derek Cranshaw (contact)

I'm a master's student working on the DEAP experiment. My current research is essentially trying to understand the signal contributions from contaminants in the detector using computer simulations. More specifically, I am working on trying to understand the contamination profile based on comparing simulation and real data, and developing ways to exclude contaminant decays events from dark matter interaction events.

 
Pietro Giampa

(contact) Pietro Giampa

I'm a PhD candidate working on the DEAP-3600 experiment, which is currently taking data in hope to find evidence for the existence of dark matter. My involvement with DEAP-3600 ranges between various activity from R&D and construction to different data analysis tasks. My primary focus is the identification and reduction of alpha decays from the Uranium and Thorium chains. Those type of decays could, in specific conditions, produce a signal similar to what expected from dark matter. Prior to this, I did my masters at Royal Holloway University of London where I was involved with another dark matter experiment called DMTPC.

 
Ian Lam

Ian Lam (contact)

I am a Masters student working with the SNO+ Collaboration. I am currently involved in scintillator purification and nitrogen source calibration for the water phase of SNO+. I did my undergraduate studies in Mathematical Physics at the University of Waterloo.

 
Alexis Brossard

(contact) Alexis Brossard

I am a PhD candidate working on the NEWS-G experiment. My work so far has consisted of creating background simulations in order to understand data acquired with detectors in underground laboratories. I am also involved in building hardware of the detector, especially the design of the sensor to ensure a good quality data, and to have a better understanding of the detector response.

 
Daniel Durnford

Daniel Durnford

I am a Master's student working on the NEWS-G direct dark matter search experiment. My work has centered primarily on exploring new calibration strategies for our detectors, and the estimation of radioactive contaminants and backgrounds for our experiment. I am also helping to create a simulation/likelihood analysis framework for our upcoming project at SNOLAB. Prior to this, I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta, including work on the PICO and SNO+ experiments.

 
Mike Clark

Mike Clark

I am a current PhD student working with Philippe Di Stefano and the NEWS-G group with a focus on scintillation. I have performed experiments to understand the scintillation properties of alkali halide crystals at low temperatures motivated by their possible use in cryogenic dark matter experiments. I am also working towards studying the scintillation light produced by the gaseous detectors of NEWS-G.

 
Marie Vidal

Marie Vidal

I did my undergraduate studies and Master's degree in France. My principal interest in physics is the study of neutrinos. I have been working on this particle for the past 4 years, and I am excited to pursue this research. My PhD project in NEWS-G is related to the detection of the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEνNS) using a gaseous detector close to a nuclear power plant. My work is going to estimate the feasibility of such an experiment. I am also involved in taking quenching factor measurements at TUNL of our gas detector (S15).

 

Visiting Research Students

Chloé Bouard (contact)

From the CEA Grenoble, DSM/INAC/SP2M/NM (NM is for Nanostructure and Magnetism) with supervisors A. Marty and P. Warin.

Maïca Clavel (contact)

Successfully defended my PhD in September this year, and now starting a one-year postdoc at SAp/CEA-Saclay to work on the accretion-ejection processes in X-ray binaries. In the process of applying to get a postdoc position abroad next year.

 

Past Thesis Topics

Projects that students at Queen's have completed as Master's or PhD theses include:

"Numerical Methods and Approximations for the Calculation of Solar Neutrino Fluxes in Three Flavours Focused on Results for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Ryan Martin, M.Sc, 2006 - download in PDF format (14MB)
"Injection of a Uniform 24Na Radioactive Source into the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
Chris Howard, M.Sc, 2006 - download in PDF format (18MB)
"The 222Rn Spike Source Calibration of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Detector"
Marcus Thomson, M.Sc, 2004
"A Study of Relative Efficiencies of Photomultiplier Tubes in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Christian Ouellet, M.Sc, 2003 - download in PDF format (8MB)
"The Day/Night Effect in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Bryan Fulsom, M.Sc, 2003
"Direct Evidence for Weak Flavour Mixing with The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Mark Boulay, Ph.D, 2001 - download in gzipped postscript format (1MB)
"The Optical Calibration of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Bryce Moffat, Ph.D, 2001 - download in gzipped postscript format (14MB)
"Cryogenic Dark Matter Detectors"
Lorne Erhardt, Ph.D, 2001
"The Electron-Scattering Reaction in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Chris Jillings, Ph.D, 1999 - download in gzipped postscript format (750kB)
"Energy Calibration of SNO for Measurement of the Charged-Current Neutrino Reaction"
Andre Hamer, Ph.D, 1999 - download in gzipped postscript format (1MB)
"Study of the Cavity Wall Background in the SNO Detector"
Matthieu Dayon, M.Sc, 1999 - download in gzipped postscript format (800kB)
"An Analysis of Large Pulse Events in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Photo-multiplier Tubes"
Ed Korpach, M.Sc, 1999 - download in gzipped postscript format (1.2MB)
"A Device and Procedure for testing the PMT positions in the SNO detector"
Keith Rose, M.Sc, 1999
"Calibration of SNO for the Detection of 8B Neutrinos"
Richard Ford, Ph.D, 1998 - download in gzipped postscript format (2.5MB)
"An Examination of the PMT β-γ Background in the SNO Detector"
Dean Haslip, M.Sc, 1996
"The α-Induced Thick-Target γ-Ray Yield from Light Elements"
Robert Heaton, Ph.D, 1994
"A Cryogenic Radon Detector for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Andre Hamer, M.Sc, 1994
"A high energy gamma-ray source for calibration of SNO"
Lorne Erhardt, M.Sc, 1994
"High flow rate degasser for removing radon for the SNO project"
S. Noel, M.Sc, 1994
"Nitrogen/Dye laser system for the optical calibration of SNO"
Richard Ford, M.Sc, 1993
"Simulation of a 3He (n,γ) calibration source for SNO"
Victor Uras, M.Sc, 1993
"Measurement of 3He (n,γ) cross-section for En = 0.14-2.0 MeV"
Robert Komar, Ph.D, 1992 - download in gzipped postscript format (1MB)
"Background Measurements using a NaI(Tl) Detector"
Jeffrey Thiessen, M.Sc, 1992
"A photomultiplier tube evaluation system for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Chris Jillings, M.Sc, 1992
"Study of vacuum degassing for SNO water system"
X. Zhu, M.Sc, 1992
"222Rn Emanation into vacuum"
Manquing Liu, M.Sc, 1991
"Evaluation of Large Photo-Multiplier Tubes for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Randy MacLeod, M.Sc, 1990
"Neutron Shielding Calculations for the SNO Detector"
Robert Heaton, M.Sc, 1988
"Characterization of the Hamamatsu R1449 Photomultiplier Tube"
Robert Komar, M.Sc, 1987

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