Partial list of summer research projects for 2005


Note: this list is not complete; it is being updated on a regular basis. If you would like to work with a UBC professor not on the list, feel free to contact him/her directly to find out whether (s)he is offering summer projects for undergraduates. Contact information and a description of the research done here can be found at the www.physics.ubc.ca

Faculty Short description of project(s)
Jeff Young
  • Site-specific attachment of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals on photonic crystal microcavities
  • Numerical simulation of quantum optical effects in ultrasmall optical cavities
  • Jess Brewer If a student can propose a project at the TRIUMF muSR Facility (a) that clearly needs doing and (b) for which [s]he is both keen and qualified, I will be glad to help make it happen. A good first impression of what we do can be gained from our Web site at http://musr.org where both our strengths and our weaknesses should be evident to a critical and perceptive observer. (The idea is to identify some weakness that can be corrected in a summer's worth of effort!) I will of course be only too glad to supplement the Web site with discussion and elaboration, either by Email, by telephone or on paper, as needed. But have a look there first. (Hint: most of the projects I have going involve the Web site in some way! See for example the "RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS" link or the "HOW TO ?" column. What needs doing? You tell me!
    Scott Oser The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a world-class detector for solar neutrinos located in Sudbury, Ontario. We have opportunities for a student to work for a 4 or 8 month period with detector operations, maintenance, and data analysis. The student will take an active role in operating the SNO experiment. At least a portion of the work will be done at the SNO site in Sudbury.
    Andre Marziali
  • DNA concentration and purification using 2-D nonlinear electrophoresis
  • Single molecule DNA identification using biological or synthetic nanometer-scale pores
  • Network simulations within single cells
  • Carl Michal NMR microcoils for two-photon excitation and single fibre silk studies
    Ingrid Stairs
  • Single pulses and/or absolute position angle in the relativistic binary pulsar B1534+12 -- with potential to verify our recent description of the system geometry.
  • Mapping the 2-dimensional emission region in the precessing pulsar B1828-11
  • Kirk W. Madison In the UBC Quantum Degenerate Gases laboratory, we are building a laser-cooling apparatus to generate ultra-cold samples of Rubidium and Lithium gases. These samples will be loaded into an optical crystal to realize a quantum simulator, a special purpose analog quantum computer. Possible topics for a 4 to 8 month project include but are not limited to the design, development and fabrication of:
  • magnetic trap for cold atoms
  • anti-reflection coating for our diode lasers
  • fixed and/or dynamic holographic grating system for optical crystal generation
  • computational tools for the 2-D analysis of absorption and florescence images of cold atomic samples including the investigation of a technique for beating the standard classical diffraction limit.
  • Doug Bonn We plan to use a focussed ion beam to thin crystals of high temperature superconductors and then write patterns into the crystal in order to manipulate vortices. There are several inter-related projects that need a student to tackle how to do this ion-milling of the samples. Two examples are studies of magnetic vortices tethered to deliberate defects milled into samples. Another is to generate a narrow superconducting "wire" that can only accomodate a 1-dimensional string of vortices. The project would be a mix of learning how to use this state-of-the-art equipment, and then helping with the experiments on the samples.
    Douglas Scott Cosmology using Archival Studies of Sub-millimetre Data: The SCUBA instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is currently the world's best sub-mm camera for studying dust emission from distant galaxies. A great deal of data has been collected since SCUBA started in 1997. Essentially all of these data are freely available, but very little has been done in the way of archival studies. This project will involve working with other members of the UBC sub-mm cosmology group to develop methods and write code to perform studies on parts of the SCUBA archive which contain "blank sky". One approach could be to produce an automated method for finding serendipitous bright sources when the telescope was targetting nearby objects. Another approach might be to statistically study the distribution of fluxes in blank sky measurements to uncover the properties of the faint underlying sources which cannot be individually detected. The project requires some background and a lot of interest in astrophysics, as well as some expertise in computing and numerical methods.
    Tom Tiedje Epitaxial Growth Modeling: Epitaxial crystal growth is a self-assembly process, widely used in industry, in which individual atoms spontaneously assemble into a single crystal lattice at a surface. The shape of the surface during and after growth provides information about the atomic-scale phenomena which take place during growth. Numerical simulations of the growth using kinetic Monte Carlo and continuum equations driven with noise are complementary ways of describing the growth process. The goal of this project will be to use numerical simulations of crystal growth to model the random surface topography observed experimentally that is caused by spontaneous fluctuations associated with the random arrival and attachment of adatoms. In addition the chaotic behaviour frequently associated with the solutions of non-linear differential equations is an additional source of random topography.
    Epitaxial Oxide Semiconductors: This project will focus on one or more aspects of the growth and physical properties of ZnO, a new epitaxial oxide semiconductor which can be optically and electrically active. This material will be grown on single crystal substrates in ultrahigh vacuum in the presence of an alkali metal surfactant and reactive oxygen created by a low pressure plasma discharge.
    Harvey Richer Reduction of Hubble Space Telescope data
    Jaymie Matthews Processing and analysing data from the MOST space satellite: The MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) mission, launched in June 2003, is Canada's first all-Canadian scientific satellite in over 30 years. The instrument, designed and built largely in the UBC Department of Physics & Astronomy, has the unique capability to measure changes in stellar brightness down to levels near 1 part per million, and to monitor stellar variability continuously for up to two months from orbit.
    Each MOST data set consists of series of subrasters of CCD (Charge Coupled Device) images of a Primary Science Target and several Secondary Science Targets, along with detailed satellite telemetry and instrument parameters. With sampling rates of several times per minute and continuous monitoring for weeks, a single data set can consist of up to a quarter of a million individual files. The raw data are downloaded to a network of ground stations at UBC, U of Toronto and U. of Vienna, and the scientific data are gathered here at UBC for processing and various levels of analysis.
    The ultrahigh precision of the measurements and the long time coverage means that new data processing techniques and software have been developed, and are still being refined. A prospective USRA student could be involved in one or more of a wide range of MOST activities, which include:
  • frequency analysis of MOST photometry to identify periodicic signals in a Target Star, with a variety of algorithms
  • CCD image processing to optimise the quality of the reduced data
  • helping to develop and expand the MOST public data archive
  • updating and improving MOST ground station software, and helping with UBC ground station operations
  • preliminary design studies for the upcoming asteroid discovery and tracking mission, NEOSSat (Near Earth Object Surveillence Satellite), whose concept arose from the MOST mission
  • developing the educational and outreach components of the MOST web site
  • David Jones -building a mode-locked fiber laser
    -constructing electronic control loops to stablize mode-locked fiber laser and Ti:Sapphire lasers.
    ... ...

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