Calling all undergraduate physics students! The Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference is the largest undergraduate non-profit physics conference in North America. Bringing together students from across Canada (and for the first time parts of the United States), this four-day event is an incredible opportunity to learn about undergraduate research at other universities, share research you've wo
rked on, and network with the some of the brightest minds in the country.
2014 marks the 50th anniversary of CUPC, and Queen's intends to host it in style. The student talks, plenary lectures, and other events will take place both on the beautiful Queen's University campus and the luxurious Four Points Sheraton hotel, a ten minute walk apart in the heart of Kingston. The CUPC 2014 team is pleased to announce its plenary speakers for 2014:
Rene Doyon, of the University of Montreal, heads the Montreal Brown Dwarf and Exoplanets Research Group. He is a co-principal investigator of SPIRou, a collaboration at the Canada France Hawaii Telescope that in 2017 will begin looking for detailed information about planets in the habitable regions of other stars. https://sites.google.com/site/mbderg/rene-doyon
Stephen Morris is a professor and researcher at the University of Toronto. His area of expertise is nonlinear physics, the study of driven nonequilibrium systems. Much of this focuses on the formation of patterns that arise in surprising places all over nature. One of his group's most recent works is the study of these patterns in the growth and physical features of icicles. http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~smorris/smorris.html
Ted Hsu is one of our own, a Queen's graduate from 1984. He did his Master's at Princeton, and did post-doctoral research at Chalk River on nuclear physics, amongst other places. He spent time working as a trader and analyst with the Banque Nationale de Paris and is currently the federal MP for Kingston and the Islands. As the Liberal Party critic for Science and Technology and Post-Secondary Education, Dr. Hsu will bring a wealth of experience to CUPC. http://blog.tedhsu.ca/
Finally, CUPC 2014 is proud to announce as the fourth speaker Dr. Art MacDonald. A graduate of Dalhousie University and the California Institute of Technology, he is currently the Queen's University Research Chair. He too has worked at the Chalk River Facility, and has taught at both Queen's and Princeton University, but his main claim to fame is his contribution to the solar neutrino problem. He led the team that confirmed in 2001 that electron neutrinos emitted from the sun oscillated through tau and muon neutrinos over long distances. This earned him and a colleague the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 2007. http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistprofile.php?pID=436
During the conference you'll have the opportunity to visit multiple labs and facilities around Queen's and Kingston, including the South East Ontario Cancer Research Center, the Fuel Cell Research Center, the brand new Micro/Nano Lab at Innovation Park, and Queens' own Stirling Labs with a range of experiments (and plenty of lasers). Attendees can choose from one of two pre-planned itineraries Saturday afternoon, with lunch provided in between stops. In addition to the traditional conference fare, this year CUPC will feature a new career panel event. Composed of professionals from a variety of physics-related fields, students will hear an open discussion of the options facing them after graduation, and have the opportunity to ask their own questions. Accommodations will be provided by the Four Points Sheraton Kingston hotel. Comfortable rooms and a fantastic menu guarantee you won't be homesick or hungry. For times when meals won't be provided at the hotel, dozens of excellent restaurants are a short walk away in downtown. Last but not least, the classic CUPC Pub Crawl will ready to roll Saturday evening. Relax and get to know your fellow undergraduates in a more casual setting as you tour just a few of Kingston's many bars. Full registration, including accommodations, will cost $350 (CAD) and will be available on September 1st through our website. If you do not need to stay in the hotel or would prefer to arrange your own accommodations the fee for the conference events is $250, which still includes the meals provided for all attendees. Find us online: http://www.cupc.ca
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CUPC2014
