Acadia Physics Department

Matt Bluteau

Our students continue to amaze us!  2012 is another fantastic year of student accomplishments in the Department of Physics.

At the Atlantic Undergraduate Physics and Astronomy Conference (AUPAC) held in February, two of our students were awarded three awards!  Graham Reid was awarded third place in the Best Talk category for his work “Atomic Potential Corrections to Multislice Simulation of TEM Images”.  For this work he was also awarded the AIMMS Award (the ACEnet Institute for Materials Modeling and Simulation Award).  Cathryn Parsons won the Science Communication Award for her work “Optimization of the Monocular Indirect Ophthalmoscope”.  Graham and Cathryn both completed Honours degrees in April 2012, and are both planning to attend graduate school in Physics in September 2012. 

In addition, one of our third year students, Matthew Bluteau, is travelling to CERN, the European organization for nuclear research.  He is one of only five Canadian Physics students to be awarded a Canadian Institute of Particle Physics (IPP)/CERN summer student research fellowship. He will spend two months at Simon Fraser University reviewing data for CERN, and then he will head to Geneva to work at CERN headquarters, which is home of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.  “It’s amazing to have this opportunity,” says Bluteau. “I am interested in particle physics and also alternate forms of energy, so working on this project will give me a chance to explore my options in a real world setting.”

Our students' accomplishments reach further than the Physics lab or classroom!  Cameron Wade, another one of our third year students, was named a Canadian Interuniversity Sport Football All-Canadian.  While completing Physics courses very successfully, he is making his mark in the national varsity sports arena.

Congratulations to all of our fine students!