{"id":9132,"date":"2018-04-09T16:05:47","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=9132"},"modified":"2025-08-19T10:03:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T14:03:27","slug":"graduate-studies-celebration-at-carleton","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/graduate-studies-celebration-at-carleton\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold Medal Research: Inaugural Graduate Studies Celebration at Carleton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Gold Medal Research: Inaugural Graduate Studies Celebration at Carleton\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The Gold Medal winner files across the stage, accepts recognition of the exceptional achievement, then \u2013 without a word \u2013 disappears into a sea of mortarboards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or at least that\u2019s the way it\u2019s been for 145 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Governor General\u2019s Academic Medal<\/a> recognizes Canada\u2019s finest scholars, and winners of the Gold Medal have broken new ground in their fields, but they haven\u2019t been given a platform to share it, until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Matthias Neufang, Carleton University\u2019s dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYear after year, I would be on a podium and would congratulate people,\u201d says Matthias Neufang, Carleton University\u2019s dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut all I could do was read their thesis title \u2013 and no one would really know what the groundbreaking research was. The Gold Medal honours the best graduate work in a given year, but all the audience knows is that this must be truly outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Honouring Winners from Across Ontario<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Neufang conceived an event to honour winners from across Ontario and give each a chance to deliver a five-minute presentation on their work. On April 6, the inaugural Ontario Graduate Studies Celebration of Academic Excellence brought together eight Gold Medal winners at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society<\/a> on Sussex Drive, with another three joining via video, as they pursue post-graduate opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graham Cree, working with Carleton\u2019s ATLAS research group \u2013 which uses data from the ATLAS particle detector of the Large Hadron Collider<\/a> at Switzerland\u2019s CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research<\/a> \u2013 developed a way to more accurately measure the Higgs boson particle\u2019s mass, natural width and interaction rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Higgs boson \u2013 which gives other particles their mass \u2013 is the final piece of the standard model of particle physics. It\u2019s been predicted to exist since the 1960s, but was only discovered in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Graham Cree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

CERN\u2019s Large Hadron Collider accelerates protons to 99.79 per cent of the speed of light, controlling locations of collisions so they occur within detectors. Particles produced pass through layers of specialized electronics that detect particles, but not all equipment is created equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe detector has five million different readouts, and all of these components have a different level of precision,\u201d Cree says. \u201cWith only 100 events, you haven\u2019t really converged to the average yet. It isn\u2019t a large number. Some are good events; they go through our best detectors, and some are bad events that go through equipment thrown in as an afterthought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My thesis was a technique that took all this into account. Not only do we have a very precise measurement, we have one that\u2019s very honest. We have good events and bad events, and can statistically account for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Showcasing a Breadth of Research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cree contributed to our understanding of the world on the most fundamental level, but not all Gold Medal-winning research is as mind-bendingly theoretical as particle physics can be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n