Eric Geringas / en 老司机直播 PhD student in astronomy heads to 'bottom of the world' to upgrade telescope /news/u-t-phd-student-astronomy-heads-bottom-world-upgrade-telescope <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">老司机直播 PhD student in astronomy heads to 'bottom of the world' to upgrade telescope</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2018-03-26-antarctica-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=zzNBZziu 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2018-03-26-antarctica-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=MV78DQj0 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2018-03-26-antarctica-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=FUsVDtNq 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2018-03-26-antarctica-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=zzNBZziu" alt="photo of PhD student in winter gear at South Pole"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>noreen.rasbach</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2018-03-27T00:00:00-04:00" title="Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 00:00" class="datetime">Tue, 03/27/2018 - 00:00</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">鈥淢ost of the problems you come across are unique and often require novel solutions,鈥 says Matt Young about his work at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (photo courtesy of Matt Young)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/eric-geringas" hreflang="en">Eric Geringas</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/astronomy" hreflang="en">Astronomy</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dunlap-institute-astronomy-astrophysics" hreflang="en">Dunlap Institute for Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/global" hreflang="en">Global</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>When&nbsp;<strong>Matt Young</strong>&nbsp;was a kid growing up in Perth, Australia, his family would go on camping trips to the southern tip of Western Australia. There was a sign there, on the beach, saying 鈥淣ext Stop: Antarctica.鈥</p> <p>Little did he know that some 20 years later, as a University of Toronto graduate student, he鈥檇 be spending two months at the South Pole, helping upgrade the camera on a giant telescope that observes the Cosmic Microwave Background&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;light from the earliest days of the universe.</p> <p>Last November, the third-year PhD student made the long trek from Toronto to the 鈥渂ottom of the world鈥 鈥 the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station 鈥 taking five flights over two weeks to get there. He had just a few weeks of the Antarctic summer 鈥 24-hour sunlight and balmy temperatures of just -30潞C&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;to work with another graduate student, overhauling and upgrading the telescope鈥檚 camera.</p> <p>The work involved disassembling the one-tonne instrument, replacing its three lenses with ones made with a&nbsp;new anti-reflective coating, and the high-stakes work of assembling and installing 10 new detector wafers, delicate sensors that focus and record the microwaves captured by the camera from the telescope鈥檚 10-metre dish. One false move or dropped screw, and the entire wafer could be rendered useless.</p> <p><img alt class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__7896 img__view_mode__media_large attr__format__media_large" height="453" src="/sites/default/files/2018-03-26-antarctica-two-resized.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" width="680" loading="lazy"></p> <p><em>The telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (photo by Keith Vanderlinde)</em></p> <p>For Young, this was the reason he had pivoted from his undergraduate engineering degree to graduate work in astronomy.</p> <p>鈥淭he work I鈥檓 doing here is exactly what I love&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;hands-on work with a huge variety of scientific equipment,鈥 he says.&nbsp;鈥淢ost of the problems you come across are unique and often require novel solutions.鈥</p> <p>The 15-hour days of painstaking labour didn鈥檛 faze him at all&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;they were exactly what he had eagerly signed up for.</p> <p>鈥淭here鈥檚 a huge difference between looking at diagrams of the telescope in Toronto, and actually taking things apart myself,鈥 Young says. 鈥淏eing here puts everything together. The skills I鈥檓 learning here are invaluable. I doubt I could pick them up any other way than by being directly involved.鈥</p> <p>That鈥檚 exactly why 老司机直播's department of astronomy and astrophysics strives to give its graduate students as many opportunities as possible to travel to the world鈥檚 most important telescopes.</p> <p>鈥淕iving graduate students the opportunity to go into the field and make these measurements themselves completely changes the experience, from sitting at a desk and having someone email you a data set&nbsp;into a really fully interactive science experiment where you鈥檙e running the whole show,鈥 says<strong>&nbsp;</strong>Assistant Professor <strong>Keith Vanderlinde</strong> of<strong>&nbsp;</strong>the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science and&nbsp;老司机直播's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy &amp;&nbsp;Astrophysics.&nbsp;<font color="#485667" face="Open Sans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 16px;">&nbsp;</span></font></p> <p>鈥淚t enriches their learning experience enormously. At the end of the day, it makes them better scientists.鈥</p> <p>As the austral summer comes to an end, Young is on his way back to warmer climes, and his PhD research with Vanderlinde.</p> <p>鈥淪eeing as my passion is scientific instrumentation, the most valuable thing you can have is hands-on experience,鈥 he says.</p> <p>鈥淓ven with the long days, I鈥檝e loved every second of it. It just helps confirm that this is what I want to be doing as a career.鈥</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Tue, 27 Mar 2018 04:00:00 +0000 noreen.rasbach 132166 at #UofTGrad16: 217 reasons to celebrate leadership in 老司机直播's Class of 2016 /news/uoftgrad16-217-reasons-celebrate-leadership-u-t-s-class-2016 <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">#UofTGrad16: 217 reasons to celebrate leadership in 老司机直播's Class of 2016</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-06-10-cressy-grads.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Oo9cQTFV 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2016-06-10-cressy-grads.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Q9YoE5HL 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2016-06-10-cressy-grads.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=lUZXUwze 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-06-10-cressy-grads.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Oo9cQTFV" alt="photo of grads exiting university college doors"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>lanthierj</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-06-10T11:34:11-04:00" title="Friday, June 10, 2016 - 11:34" class="datetime">Fri, 06/10/2016 - 11:34</time> </span> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/eric-geringas" hreflang="en">Eric Geringas</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Eric Geringas</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/convocation" hreflang="en">Convocation</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/convocation-2016" hreflang="en">Convocation 2016</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/students" hreflang="en">Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/alumni" hreflang="en">老司机直播</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/gordon-cressy" hreflang="en">Gordon Cressy</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/awards" hreflang="en">Awards</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item">Gordon Cressy Awards recognize students who made a difference in the lives of others</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Among the 18,000 members of the University of Toronto's Class of 2016 are&nbsp;217 students who received special recognition for their&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 20.8px;">contributions to student life and education, service to the community and&nbsp;volunteering hundreds of hours of their time 鈥&nbsp;while maintaining excellent grades.</span></p> <p>Many winners of the&nbsp;Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award made a permanent contribution to the university community, while&nbsp;some&nbsp;created something entirely new: they saw an opportunity, and built a bridge.</p> <h2><a href="http://alumni.utoronto.ca/2016-cressy-award-recipients.pdf">See the complete list of 2016 winners</a></h2> <p>Faculty of Medicine grad&nbsp;<strong>Meghna Rajaprakash</strong>&nbsp;was instrumental in creating an extracurricular elective course for med students&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;a program that brings in guest lecturers to teach knowledge translation.</p> <p><img alt="photo of Meghna" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__1202 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-06-10-meghna-embed.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"></p> <p>鈥淚 came from a research background,鈥 says Rajaprakash, who earned a Master of Science degree&nbsp;before starting medical school. 鈥淲hat inspired me to initiate the course was seeing the large gap between scientific findings and their manifestation in tangible, usable clinical practice and policy.鈥</p> <p>The course helps students translate the latest medical research into evidence-based clinical practice&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;a skill that鈥檚 only briefly covered in the packed med-school curriculum.</p> <p>鈥淲hen I see a gap,鈥 she says, 鈥淚 see it as an opportunity for change, rather than something negative. It fuels my passion, and inspires me to find other like-minded individuals to work on making that change.鈥</p> <p>The course has been running for two years, and student feedback is overwhelmingly positive: more than 80 per cent of the class said they intend to apply the knowledge and skills they picked up in their future work.</p> <p><strong>Ming-Yi Bian</strong> also saw an opportunity. When she was a first-year engineering student, she joined a group that was starting a new student club at her faculty, the You鈥檙e Next Career Network. Four years later, she is graduating as its president.</p> <p><img alt="photo of Ming" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__1203 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-06-10-ming-embed.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"></p> <p>The network was the result of efforts by engineering students looking to learn more about career and other opportunities for engineers. &nbsp;In particular, she says, first- and second-year students wanted more internships, which they felt would give them better access to summer jobs in subsequent years.&nbsp;</p> <p>The career network drew dozens of new companies to campus career fairs, and also organized a Resume Hackathon&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;300 students working on their resumes at the same time, with more than 50 mentors.&nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淲e present our personal experiences to first-years on how to get help, and what not to be afraid of,鈥 she says. 鈥淚 can see the difference from year to year of how aware students are of how to find opportunities.鈥</p> <p>For <strong>Satoko Nakamoto</strong>, an international student at Victoria College in Victoria University,&nbsp;her own experiences showed her the way to make a difference.</p> <p><img alt="photo of Sakoto" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__1204 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-06-10-sakoto-embed.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"></p> <p>鈥淲hen I came to 老司机直播, my first reaction was, it鈥檚 overwhelming,鈥 she says. 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 used to North American party culture. I did go to some frosh events, but I was really shy, and I didn鈥檛 know how to interact with people.鈥</p> <p>Nakamoto joined VISA, the Victoria International Students鈥 Association, got a mentor, and saw her comfort with university life and her confidence flourish. &nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淰ISA really helped me learn to overcome these struggles,鈥 she says. 鈥淎nd then, I wanted to help other international students who may be feeling the way I did.鈥</p> <p>Nakamoto threw herself into the work, ending up as VISA president in her final year. Under her leadership, the organization not only grew in size and profile, attracting many more international students and volunteer mentors, but got financial support from the college, which has given it stability.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<br> And, at 老司机直播 Mississauga, business student <strong>Daniel Jayasinghe</strong> was inspired by a talk he heard as a frosh about 鈥渓ollipop moments鈥&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;actions taken to improve the lives of people around you. He decided then and there that 鈥渨hatever I did on campus would be something that would try to make people鈥檚 life better in some way.鈥</p> <p><img alt="photo of Daniel" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__1205 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-06-10-daniel-embed.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"></p> <p>Jayasinghe was one of the student co-founders of I-CUBE, an entrepreneurial hub where students can create a business plan, learn to deliver a pitch, and get funding and mentors.</p> <p>I-CUBE is now a full-scale business accelerator housed at the Institute for Management and Innovation, with partner funding, a range of programming and even an Entrepreneur-in-Residence.</p> <p>鈥淭he thing I like is creating something out of nothing,鈥 Jayasinghe says. 鈥淚n any business, the key is finding a need and addressing it. Entrepreneurship forces you to be creative, to find creative solutions to problems, and to think outside the box.鈥</p> <p>For their service to their fellow students, these four new graduates were honoured with the Cressy Award, joining a community of more than 3,400 graduates who have received the prize over the past 22 years.</p> <p>At the award ceremony on April 20, the recipients were celebrated by <strong>Gordon Cressy</strong> himself, university representatives, the alumni association, their fellow students and family members.</p> <p>鈥淭here were more than 200 of us,鈥 says Bian, 鈥渁nd everyone did something different. It made me feel hopeful. I was much happier getting an award with 200 people than with four or five people. It means 老司机直播 has a strong community, and everyone is willing to serve.鈥</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 10 Jun 2016 15:34:11 +0000 lanthierj 14230 at