Particle Accelerator Wows Audiences

A linear particle accelerator, nicknamed MEGA, built in the lab of Rolf Wüthrich with the help of six undergraduate engineering students, has been impressing audiences far and wide. Already featured in The Montreal Gazette and other media, the accelerator wowed a more specialized crowd at this year's Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference and is poised to be one of the most popular contest entries in the Project of the Year competition organized by Dassault Systèmes. The project is also entered into another competition at the International Congress of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers, June 4-6.

The goal of the device is to accelerate electrons to an energy of 100,000 electron-volts and shoot them in the form of a beam onto an electrolytic solution. In this way the accelerator allows the controlled production of solvated electrons.  Dr.  Wüthrich's team aims to study these with the long-term goal of improving related technologies in the field of micro-machining and nano-particle synthesis for green energy converting systems.

Graduating student and project manager, Jad Saleh, is excited about his team's contribution to this leading-edge research, not to mention its enthusiastic reception at the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference.

"We got to see the reaction of students from other universities and they were all impressed," says Saleh.  In fact, Saleh and his fellow team members stayed at the conference's technology exposition a whole extra 90 minutes in order to field the large number of questions from attendees. "Many delegates were stunned to see the kind of project undergraduates can do."

Saleh was joined at the conference in Waterloo by teammates Stephen Jacobs, Sabrina Ibarra and Giovanni Fancello. In addition to showcasing their creation, they also enjoyed many other conference activities. Saleh believes that Concordia students should strongly consider participating in the conference every year and hopes ENCS attendance will increase.

Vote for MEGA

Just a few days of voting remain in the Dassault Systèmes competition, which recognizes designs that were built using the company's software. Voting takes place via Facebook, and at last count, the Concordia particular accelerator (MEGA) was in the top three.