Undergraduate Research

Undergraduates are encouraged to consider research within our department.  Our professors are well-funded through federal, provincial and international awards.

We offer summer research opportunities to interested undergraduate students funded out of our research grants.  In addition, physics students are often recipients of an Undergraduate Student Research Award, funded by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council. Students need to have a "first-class average" in order to apply, which means a cumulative grade point average of at least 80%. USRA applications are due at the end of January each year.  Interested students should contact the Undergraduate Coordinator in December or early January to learn more.

Those awards as well as summer research assistantships — funded by professors’ research grants — help cultivate student motivation and interest in our focus areas of subatomic and applied physics, and expose students to advanced experimentation, simulation and development of novel detectors, and to data analysis. Students experience our state-of-the-art laboratory facilities on campus but are also offered travel to Jefferson Lab, the Saskatchewan Centre for Cyclotron Sciences and the Canadian Light Source.  Students are taught laboratory safety, presentation skills and scientific report writing, and are generally immersed in international collaborative research and communications. Many students chose to repeat that summer experience (some have been USRA holders for multiple summers) and some elected to continue in graduate studies with us.  

Recently, our department has implemented an Honours Research Project for the last year of study, which includes literature search and identifying a project, appreciation for how physics research is performed, and learning important scientific skills such as drafting technical reports, oral presentation of results, and responding quickly to questions.