Alumni Profile - Emilie Carpentier

Story appeared in the 2015 issue of QMS Connections Magazine.

BY LEANNE SCHULTZ, OPERATIONS & HR MANAGER
ALUMNI EMILIE CARPENTIER (‘12)

I have just finished my third year at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. Upon completing my studies at QMS I came to Queen’s to study physics, which interested me throughout high school. After I finish my undergrad I hope to continue my studies at grad school in Medical Physics, specifically in radiation therapy.

This summer I am staying in Kingston to work for SNOLAB, an underground physics laboratory located in Sudbury, ON. My research will be conducted at the university and I will have the opportunity to travel to Sudbury on a few occasions. The project I work for at SNOLAB is called PICO, which is designed to detect dark matter particles called WIMPS.

One aspect of PICO is called PICO 60, a quartz chamber filled with a superheated fluid. If a WIMP passes through the fluid, it will produce a bubble that can be detected by a camera. One of the main issues with dark matter detection is that back-ground radiation from the universe also produces bubbles similar to a WIMP. This is why the laboratory is located in an underground mine, to try and reduce the amount of radiation reaching the bubble chamber. I am really excited to be working for SNOLAB this summer and for the opportunities to study such an interesting topic as dark matter.