The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has become a mainstay of support for Canadian research excellence since its launch more than a decade ago. With a new mandate that includes the stewardship of four large-science facilities across the country as well as a new strategic plan, the arms-length funding agency visited TRIUMF this Wednesday to (a) get a personal look at a number of CFI-supported projects that are based at TRIUMF and (b) to get familiar with how a national laboratory like TRIUMF manages it affairs with a good track record of relevance and performance.
Guy Levesque, director of programs at CFI, spent more than two hours at TRIUMF after lunch on November 28. Literally between planes on business in British Columbia, he made time for a visit. The intinerary began with a meeting with TRIUMF's executive team and some of the principal investigators for active CFI projects in which TRIUMF is involved. Reiner Kruecken presented a short overview of TRIUMF and summarized thge CFI-supported activities at the lab over the last five years. These included, among others, the ARIEL and e-linac accelerator project led by Dean Karlen at UVic, the M-20 beamlines led by Paul Percival at SFU, the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre led by Mike Vetterli at SFU, the IRIS nuclear-physics experiment led by Ritu Kanungo at Saint Mary's, and the Ultra-Cold Neutrons project led by Jeff Martin at Winnipeg. TRIUMF is not eligible to apply directly for CFI funds, but it is involved in many projects because of its unique technical and engineering skills and capabilities. The lab also hosts some facilities and detectors led by university collaborators that exploit TRIUMF's accelerators and beams. A rough estimate indicates that CFI funding of nealry $30M over the past five years has influenced more than $100M of activity that engages and enhances TRIUMF's role in leveraging Canadian university research. Reiner's conclusion was that Canadian leadership in subatomic physics is enabled by CFI's support and that TRIUMF provides substantial leveraging of that investment for national and international impact. Through its core operations, TRIUMF can also serve as an ideal long-term steward for some of these on-site facilities and infrastructure.
Mr. Levesque then toured TRIUMF and met several of the key project personnel. Around ARIEL, he saw the newly renovated Electron Hall and met project managers Gary Ridout and Franco Mammarella in addition to project leaders Lia Merminga and Remy Dawson. In a rare moment of access, the group also visited the ARIEL civil-construction site and toured the beam tunnel and stepped inside the concrete target hall and RIB building. After shedding the extra safety gear, the group visited the Meson Hall and met Syd Kreitzman and Gerald Morris to learn more about the M-20 muon beamline and its first week of science. Paul Schaffer led Mr. Levesque on a lightning tour of the nuclear-medicine facilities and discussed TRIUMF's relationship with commercial isotope-producer Nordion and discussed TRIUMF's long-standing research collaboration with the Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre at UBC and its expansion into more generalized neurology and brain imaging. With a stop in ISAC-II to see IRIS, DESCANT, and a several other nuclear-physics detectors, the group then visited the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre and met with Operations Manager Reda Tafirout and ATLAS scientist Isabel Trigger. The tour finished with a visit to the VECC test area where the first stage of the e-linac is being prototyped and developed. Bob Laxdal, several students, and Ken Fong showed the RF systems and electron beamline and discussed the relationships with local industry and India's VECC laboratory.
Wrapping up the tour amidst pelting rain, Mr. Levesque thanked TRIUMF and the university hosts for the discussions. On behalf of TRIUMF, Reiner expressed his appreciation for CFI's attention to Canadian excellence in research and innovation as well as the role that facilities like TRIUMF play in the larger enteprise.
-- by T.I. Meyer, TRIUMF's Head of Strategic Planning & Communication