Bi t s a nd b y t e s Working on the big questions about tiny things As an undergraduate in engineering physics at Queen’s, Dr. Mark Chen, Sci’89, heard his professors talk with excitement about the proposed Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) project, a giant particle detector buried two kilometres underground in an active nickel mine that would take almost a decade to build. In 2000, Dr. Mark Chen after earning a PhD in physics at the California Institute of Technology and teaching at Princeton University, Dr. Chen was invited by the leader of the SNO project, Queen’s Professor Dr. Arthur (Art) McDonald, to return to the university and help solve a 30-year-old mystery about why some solar neutrinos apparently disappear on their journey from the sun to Earth. “Art brought me back to Canada to join the SNO team and help understand the neutrino observatory’s data. I was eager to do it and fully participated in the data analysis. We were all amazed that the detector worked so well and the results were so clear. We had the answer to a decades-old puzzle and showed that the missing neutrinos changed to other flavours,” says Dr. Chen, a professor in the Queen’s Department of Physics and the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics. On October 6, Queen’s Professor Emeritus Dr. McDonald was named co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments at SNO proving that neutrinos transform into other neutrino types, or flavours, while travelling from the sun to Earth and demonstrating that neutrinos have mass. “This is a tremendous honour and recognition of a major scientific accomplishment in terms of the overall significance of the SNO project and the leadership shown by Art to make this discovery happen,” says Dr. Chen. Dr. Chen regards the construction of the SNO detector—a 12-metre-diameter acrylic sphere holding more than 1,000 tonnes of heavy water, buried in a 10-storey cathedral-sized cavity deep inside the mine— as an amazing feat. “A tremendous amount of engineering was involved in both the SNO and SNO+ projects, with multiple disciplines working together to achieve one common objective. I’m lucky to have the engineering training I received as an undergraduate at Queen’s, and it’s truly satisfying to be involved with all the different aspects,” he says. Dr. Chen succeeded Dr. McDonald as Gray Chair and as leader of the SNO+ project (the upgrade of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory), the world’s most sensitive instrument for detecting neutrinos. “Art has been an excellent mentor for me for many years, and I’m honoured to be following in his footsteps to push this research forward. There is much more to be done, and it’s our objective through the SNO+ and all the projects at SNOLAB to Dr. Art McDonald expand our knowledge of all the fundamental constituents of the universe,” he says.
Davies appointed to MME The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science welcomes Claire Davies as a new assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. Davies returns to Kingston after postdoctoral work in the Department of Surgery at the University of Auckland, and five years as a seniorlecturer in mechanical engineering there. She earned her PhD in systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo, her MSc in biomedical engineering from the University of Calgary, and her BSc in materials and metallurgical engineering at Queen’s. “My primary research goal focuses on increasing 4
THE COMPLETE ENGINEER
independence of people with disabilities,” writes Davies on her personal webpage. “Understanding the perceptual and physical responses of all the senses, primarily vision, haptics and sound, has given me insight into how design of devices should be undertaken to create human-machine interfaces that are easily navigated and accepted. After spending several years designing to meet the needs of specific clients, I have realised the need for universal design. Universal design is becoming increasingly popular such that devices should be easy to use by all people without the need for adaptation.”
