Nigel Smith Colloquium

Fri. Mar. 17 12:30 PM - Fri. Mar. 17 01:20 PM
Location: In Person 3M69 & via Zoom

Nigel Smith, Executive Director & CEO of TRIUMF

"A Window on TRIUMF"

This talk will be an introduction to the science programme at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre located in Vancouver, and to its relatively new Director who is pleased to be working at a ground level laboratory with real windows. Winnipeg has engagement at TRIUMF on the science programme, and is going through the process to become our newest university partner.

I will outline the various research areas that TRIUMF is currently engaged in both nationally and internationally, and the major new platforms that TRIUMF is developing. Our research areas cover nuclear and particle physics, material sciences, life sciences and detector technology development. The platforms we are developing are the ARIEL rare isotope facility, currently in construction and anticipated to be operational in 2026, and the IAMI medical isotope research platform, expected to be operational later this year.

TRIUMF has recently incorporated, and completed the development of a 20-year vision which outlines possible future research directions. I will outline this vision and the research directions we are following. This is a time of substantial change at TRIUMF as a new organisation, and I will outline some of the major changes and effects on the facility.

For a Zoom invitation to this event, please email: an.wiebe@uwinnipeg.ca.

 

BIO: Nigel Smith assumed the role of TRIUMF Executive Director and CEO in May 2021. Previously, Smith served as Executive Director of SNOLAB, Canada’s deep underground research facility in Sudbury, Ontario; he holds an adjunct Professor position at Queen's University, a visiting Professorial chair at Imperial College, London, and is also a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in the Earth4D programme. He received his Bachelor of Science in physics from Leeds University in the U.K. in 1985 and his Ph. D. in astrophysics from Leeds in 1991. He has served as a lecturer at Leeds University, a research associate at Imperial College London, group leader (dark matter) and deputy Division Head at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, before relocating to Canada.

Dr. Smith has undertaken astroparticle physics research in extreme locations throughout his career, studying astronomical sources of ultra-high energy gamma rays using a telescope at the South Pole, searching for Galactic dark matter using detectors located 1100m underground at the Boulby facility in the U.K., subsequently overseeing dark matter and neutrinos studies 2km underground at the SNOLAB facility in Canada. He now leads TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, which has a strategic objective of delivering a broad range of scientific and societal objectives. In 1987 he “wintered-over” as the sole operator of the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, being the first Briton to successfully winter at the Pole itself.

In his role as TRIUMF Director, Smith draws on an extensive portfolio of strategic and leadership experience in the development of science research facilities in the U.K. and Canada. Smith continues to serve science and academic communities across the globe in several capacities, he was co-Chair of the IUPAP Neutrino Panel, and a contributor to a wide variety of international advisory committees for the advancement of science across the globe.