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Announcements - 1100th NSERC-supported User Experiment
May 27, 2011 — Chalk River, Ontario
On February 21, Drew Marquardt, a physics graduate student at Brock University, marked the completion of the 1100th experiment at the NRC Canadian Neutron Beam Centre (CNBC) since CNBC began operating as an-NSERC supported scientific user facility on April 1, 2001. NSERC provides a Major Resource Support grant to maintain the CNBC in a state of readiness for the access by the user community.
Drew Marquadt sets up his experiment on the N5 beam line. Drew is studying the role of biomolecules such as cholesterol and vitamin E in membranes under Thad Harroun, professor of physics at Brock University.
In this research project, Drew studied how the structure of cholesterol is affected by different lipids important to the membranes of nerve cells, by using one of CNBC’s neutron beam lines. To facilitate this research, Dr. Norbert Kucerka, a CNBC research officer, provided on site guidance to assist Drew in setting up and conducting the experiment at the neutron beam line.
CNBC enables researchers, such as Drew Marquardt, to use neutron beams as tools for world-class materials research. Each year, over 200 scientists, engineers, and students from universities, government labs, and industry participate in research depending on access to our six neutron beam lines.
The 1000th such experiment was completed on Nov 13, 2008 by Sara Kenno prior to the 15-month shutdown of the NRU reactor in May 2009. Sara used one of CNBC’s neutron beam lines to map residual stress in ship hull plates, a research project in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Canada. Sara is a graduate student under Dr. Sreekanta Das, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Windsor.
