Workshops

McMaster Engineering:
A. Nuclear Energy in the High School Curriculum
B. Solar Cells: how to get Energy from the Sun

Part A: This presentation will take a Google-Earth approach to Nuclear Science and Engineering in Canada - scanning the nuclear landscape of power plants and research facilities and zoom to higher education such as nuclear engineering at McMaster. We will then examine teachers’ resources created especially by the Canadian Nuclear Association to integrate nuclear education into the high school curriculum.

Part B: A direct and sustainable approach to harnessing the sun’s power is via the use of photovoltaic devices (solar cells) to convert solar energy directly into electricity. Recently, solar cells have been deployed widely for electricity generation, from rooftop installations to utility scale solar farms. In this presentation, we will explore how physics concepts and applications make a major contribution to addressing the current challenges in energy supply, climate change and the environment.

Dr. Kleiman's Talk on Solar Energy

Adriaan Buijs became a professor in the Engineering Physics Department of McMaster University in 2009, after having worked at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) for a number of years. Prior to his coming to Canada, he was he was full professor of experimental physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and director of the particle physics department. He has worked for many years at accelerator centers such as SLAC and CERN, performing experiments and preparing for the Large Hadron Collider. Adriaan is currently president of the Canadian Nuclear Society.

Rafael Kleiman came to the Engineering Physics department at McMaster University in 2003 after working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ for 11 years. In 2004 he was appointed the Director of the Centre for Emerging Device Technologies (CEDT), the central device fabrication facility on campus. He has translated his device physics expertise to photovoltaic devices and currently leads a multi-faceted project funded by OCE and ARISE Technologies to develop high efficiency Silicon-based multi-junction solar cells. He leads the CFI/ORF project to build the Laboratory for Advanced Photovoltaic Research, focussing on the characterization of next generation photovoltaic materials and devices. He is the Scientific Director of the NSERC Photovoltaic Innovation Network, bringing together the research community, industry, government, funding agencies and advocacy groups to foster and accelerate the widespread adoption of photovoltaics as a renewable energy resource in Canada.