Darren Grant, Associate Professor of Physics and CRC Chair in Astroparticle Physics. Photo by Richard Siemens.
(Edmonton) Associate Professor of Physics Darren Grant is one of four new Canada Research Chairs at the University of Alberta.
The Government of Canada's CRC program invests $300 million per year to attract and retain some of the world's most accomplished and promising minds.
Grant, a professor in the Department of Physics and the head of DeepCore, the low-energy extension of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory located in the Antarctic, has dedicated his career to the detection and understanding two of the universe's most elusive particles-neutrinos and dark matter.
"A neutrino is a subatomic particle, a foundational particle, from which the universe is made," said Grant. "They're everywhere, billions of them passing through us every second-they go right through and they don't interact. But we don't know very much about them, they are one of nature's great mysteries to study."
What little there is to know about the neutrino, Grant's work has played a role in discovering. His PhD thesis on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory demonstrated that neutrinos have mass, providing the first evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
He says his CRC is the next step in the design and construction of a new generation of neutrino detectors, and helps further the U of A's position in this field. The U of A is Canada's first IceCube collaboration institute, one of the four founding members of TRIUMF, Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, and a full member of the SNOLAB Institute, which operates Canada's International Facility for Underground Science in Sudbury.
"The U of A offers an exceptional environment for research in astroparticle physics," he said. "This is exemplified by the infrastructure that has been developed in the Department of Physics and the Centre for Particle Physics over the last two decades. The U of A's infrastructure for subatomic research is second to none at Canadian universities, as are the technicians, technical resources and funding."
The U of A now lays claim to 48 Tier 1 and 39 Tier 2 CRCs worth $13.5 million annually.
Full story posted at: https://www.folio.ca/52m-in-canada-research-chairs-announced/