Colloquia and Seminars 2025-26

Colloquia are held weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year (September through to April). They are geared at a general audience—faculty, staff, students and interested members of the general public are welcome.

PAST COLLOQUIA

Wednesday, April 1
Dr. Makhsud Saidaminov, University of Victoria
“A Post-Silicon Semiconductor: Perovskite Solar Cells and X-ray Detector”

Wednesday, March 25
Dr. Donna Strickland, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2018, University of Waterloo
“TRuST' in Science”

Wednesday, March 11
Dr. Peter Winter, Argonne National Laboratory
“Muon g-2: Taking Particle Physics for a Spin”

Wednesday, March 4
Dr. Paula Heron, University of Washington
“Improving Student Learning: The Dual Roles of Conceptual Understanding and Reasoning Ability”

Wednesday, February 25
Dr. James Evans, University of Puget Sound
“Cosmos and Connection: The Universe of the Ancient Greeks and Romans”

Wednesday, February 11
Dr. Arthur Blackburn, University of Victoria
“Democratization of High-Resolution Electron Microscopy through Ptychography”

Wednesday, February 4
Dr. Mu-Chun Chen, UC Irvine
“NoTORIous Neutrinos”

Wednesday, January 21
Dr. Samantha Lawler, University of Regina
“The Kuiper Belt vs. the Billionaire Space Race”

Wednesday, January 7
Dr. Thomas Baker, University of Victoria
“How quantum computers can solve physics problems”

Wednesday, November 26
Dr. Deborah Lockhorst, NRC Herzberg
“MOTHRA: A new approach to reveal gas flows around galaxies”

Wednesday, November 19
Dr. Vincent Tabard-Cossa, University of Ottawa
“A Pinhole to the Proteome: The Physics of Analyzing Polymers with Solid-State Nanopores”

Wednesday, November 5
Dr. Justin Albert, University of Victoria
“Dark Energy...and a New Miniature Stratospheric Platform for Ultra-Low-Cost Communication, Precision Calibration, and Earth Observation”

Wednesday, October 29
Dr. Clemens Grassberger, University of Washington
“Understanding the Interplay between Radiation and the Immune System Through Mechanistic Modeling”

Wednesday, October 22
Dr. Larry Nittler, Arizona State University
“The Stardust Chronicles”

Wednesday, October 15
Dr. Mark van Raamsdonk, University of British Columbia
“Quantum Gravity and Cosmology”

Wednesday, October 8
Dr. Francis Halzen, Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
“IceCube: The First Decade of Neutrino Astronomy”

Wednesday, October 1
Dr. Tobias Junginger, University of Victoria
“Radiofrequency Superconductivity for Particle Accelerators”

Wednesday, September 17
Dr. Curtis Asplund, San José State University 
“How physicists are helping reform nuclear weapons policies”

Wednesday, September 10
Dr. Kai-Mei Fu, University of Washington
“Point Defects in Crystals: Trapped Atoms for Quantum Technologies”

Seminars are specialized and geared for those in a particular field. Dates and times for these talks vary.

PAST SEMINARS

Tuesday, April 14
Kate Taylor, University of Victoria
“Black holes immersed in a magnetic field: the case of the Ernst-Wild geometry”

Friday, March 20
Daniel Cecchi, University of Victoria
“Evaluation of Gold Nanoparticles as Radiosensitizing Agents for High Dose Rate Brachytherapy”

Friday, January 30
Diego Reyes, University of Victoria
“Toward Sub-Percent Astronomical Photometry: Development of Readout Electronics for the ALTAIR Project”

Friday, January 23
Dr. Chandre Dharma-wardana, University of Montreal
“Warm Dense Matter, What is it? How do we study it?”

Friday, November 28
Swapnil Daxini, University of Victoria
“Light as a Probe: Harnessing Optical Resonances for Sensing Chemical Diffusion and Mechanical Strain”

Friday, November 7
Dr. Laura Miller, TRIUMF
"Shedding light on the dark sector with DarkLight”

Friday, October 10
Juan Cristobal Rivera Vergara, University of Victoria
“Estimation of SMEFT parameters in WZ leptonic decays using the ATLAS Detector”

Thursday, July 24
Ajay Dev, University of Western Australia
“Hot Gas, Cold Gas, and Stars: Mapping the Halo Baryon Budget in the Local Universe”