FEATURED
53rd Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference
October 20-24, 2017 • Carleton University
Organizers: Ben Hansson and Waqar Muhammad (Carleton University)
The Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference
(CUPC) is an annual event run by students in
partnership with the Canadian Association of
Physicists (CAP). It was first held in 1965 by McGill
University and the University of Toronto. CUPC has
since grown into the largest undergraduate physics
conference in North America, having been hosted in
nine provinces by over 20 different institutions.
The 53rd CUPC gathered over 220 undergraduates
from across Canada, and over 300 participants in
total. The conference featured four plenary lectures,
128 student talks, 52 posters, 16 laboratories at
Carleton and the National Research Council, and 32
institutions attended the Graduate Fair. Dr. Lawrence
Krauss (Arizona State University) gave the feature
lecture on the recent LIGO – VIRGO gravitational
wave discovery and its implications, Dr. David
Sinclair (Carleton) discussed his involvement with
SNOLAB and the history of neutrino experiments,
Dr. Sangeeta Murugkar (Carleton) talked about
applications of biophotonics to medical physics,
and Dr. Rowan Thomson (Carleton) spoke on
computational models for radiotherapy.
Student talks were on a wide range of topics, from
astrophysics to biophysics. The CUPC recognized the
top three presenters from each category, and the
CAP awarded a medal to the top student presenter
overall, Aaron Lyon (Simon Fraser). Finally, the CAP’s
Committee to Encourage Women in Physics awarded
the top poster presentation to Holly Christiani
(University of Alberta).
Throughout the conference, attendees were treated
to beautiful October weather and a quiet Carleton
campus. The conference ran smoothly thanks to
the active support of the Carleton Department
of Physics, CAP, and the team of enthusiastic
volunteers.
7