• 10.2024 MSc student Marzuk Gazi wins award for his talk at the department's graduate student
    symposium.

  • 08.2024 UG summer student Ashvini Muralitharan wins best talk for her presentation at the
    department’s Summer Student Symposium

  • 05.2024 PhD student Lauren Dutcher won 1st place in the Division of Cond. Matter and Materials
    for her talk “Shape of the capillary ridge on ideal elastomeric substrates” at the Canadian
    Association of Physicists Congress, and 2nd place overall. London, ON. 

  • 04.2024 MSc student Marzuk Gazi, in collaboration with Annina Ashok and Kaitlin Davies wins a
    research grant from the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research Future Materials
    Innovators Program for their project on protein encapsulation.

  • 01.2024 UG summer student Amy Praetzel wins best talk for their presentation at the Canadian
    Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics.

  • 10.2023 MSc student Cameron Burns wins award for his talk at the department's graduate student
    symposium

  • 06.2023 Yasaman Heshmatzadeh wins first prize for her talk in the Division of Condensed Matter
    and Materials Physics at the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress, Fredericton NB

  • Carmen Lee winner of the 2023 American Physical Society, Division of Soft Matter,
    Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award which recognizes an exceptional graduate student
    pursuing research in soft matter physics. March, 2023, Las Vegas.

  • Carmen Lee selected to take part in the Rising Stars in Soft and Biological Matter
    Symposium 2022, University of Chicago. “a platform for exceptional early-career scientists
    in the broad field of soft and biological matter”

  • 07.2022 Carmen Lee wins 2nd prize for her oral presentation in the Division of Condensed Matter and
    Materials Physics at the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress.

  • 04.2022 PhD student Carmen Lee (NSERC Vanier student) receives an NSERC Postdoctoral
    Fellowship.

  • 11.2020 MSc student Lauren Dutcher wins awards for her talk at the department's graduate student
    symposium

  • 06.2020 MSc student Hamza Khattak wins best long talk and PhD student Carmen Lee wins best
    short talk at Soft Matter Canada 2020.

  • 21.01.2019 Sara Evans (UG) wins Best Poster at Canadian Conference for Undergraduate Women in
    Physics.

  • 23.11.2018 Raphael Schulman won the Governor General’s Graduate Academic Medal for 2018 (top
    PhD student at the university).

  • 02.2018 Raphael Schulman’s image selected for the NSERC Science Exposed contest “Emerging
    structures in a liquid–solid tug-of-war”

  • 15.06.2018 Carmen Lee awarded 1st place for her talk in the Division of Condensed Matter and
    Materials Physics at the 2018 Canadian Association of Physicists Congress. Carmen went on
    to compete as one of eight finalists in the overall student talk competition, finishing in 2nd
    overall

  • 15.06.2018 John Niven awarded 2nd place for his talk in the Division of Condensed Matter and
    Materials Physics at the 2018 Canadian Association of Physicists Congress.

  • 14.01.2018 Elsie Loukiantchenko wins best talk at the Canadian Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics held at Queen's Univiersity in Kingston.

  • 23.10.2017 Gurkaran Chowdhry wins second place for his talk in the Quantum & Solid State Physics section at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference held at Carleton University.

  • 10.10.2017 Clémentine Fournier and Carmen Lee win awards for their talks at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 03.10.2017 Jean-Christophe Ono-dit-Biot successfully defends his MSc thesis.

  • 15.09.2017 Benjamin Davis-Purcell successfully defends his MSc thesis.

  • 01.06.2017 Jean-Christophe Ono-dit-Biot wins first prize at the CAP Congress for his talk "Rearrangement of 2D clusters of droplets under compression: transition from crystal to glass"

  • 31.05.2017 Most of the research group at the CAP Congress in Kingston, ON. 

  • 11.05.2017 Our work highlighted as an Editor's Suggestion and APS Physics Synopsis: Drops Act Like Tension “Compasses”. The paper is entitled "Liquid droplets act as “compass needles” for the stresses in a deformable membrane" by RD Schulman, R Ledesma-Alonso, T Salez, E Raphaël, KDV, Physical Review Letters, 118 (19), 198002 (2017), [PDF], arxiv.org/pdf/1703.00799

  • 15.03.2017 Most of the group at the APS March Meeting. Talks ranging from capillary levelling to elastocapillarity to fingerring instabilities.

  • 09.03.2017 KDV got to participate in the Cerebral Coffeehouse‏ panel discussion on Creativity

  • 25.01.2017 Our work on selected for front cover: Elastocapillary bending of microfibers around liquid droplets, RD Schulman, A Porat, K Charlesworth, A Fortais, T Salez, E Raphaël, and KDV, Soft Matter, 13, 720 (2017), [PDF]  arxiv.org/pdf/1607.05990

 
 

  • 12.12.2016 Jean-Christophe Ono-dit-Biot wins second prize for his poster and John Niven wins third prize for his talk at PolyMac 2016.

  • 11.11.2016 Benjamin Davis-Purcell wins first place for his poster at the Nano Ontario Conference 2016.

  • 16.10.2016 Kathleen Charlesworth wins second place for her talk in the Biophysics/Soft Matter section at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference held at Dalhousie University.

  • 11.10.2016 Jean-Christophe Ono-dit-Biot and John Niven win awards for their talks at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 04.08.2016 Adam Fortais successfully defends his MSc thesis.

  • 01.06.2016 Our "Quick Study" entitled "Why can’t you separate interleaved books?" appeared in Physics Today

  • 17.03.2016 Group trip to APS March Meeting with fabulous presentations by Adam, Rafael, Paul, and two by Mark, including one in the Padden Awards session!!!

  • 07.03.2016 René Ledesma-Alonso (ESPCI), Post-doc with Thomas Salez and Elie Rahael visiting our group to work on elastocapilarity of elastic films and droplets

  • 29.02.2016 Amir Porat (ESPCI), student with Thomas Salez and Elie Raphael visiting our group to work on elastocapilarity of fibres and droplets

  • 16.02.2016 Thomas Salez (CNRS, ESPCI) visitting with James Forrest at the Perimeter Instititute and our group at McMaster

  • 07.01.2016 Our work on phonebook friction "Self-Amplification of Solid Friction in Interleaved Assemblies", H. Alarcon, T. Salez, C. Poulard, J.-F. Bloch, E. Raphaël, K. Dalnoki-Veress, and F. Restagno, is selected as a PRL EDITORS' SUGGESTION

 
 
 
 
 

  • 12.09.2014 Rafael Schulman successfully defends his MSc thesis!

  • 03.09.2014 Paul Fowler successfully defends his MSc thesis!

  • 03.09.2014 Solomon Barkley wins award for his talk at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 20.06.2014 Mark Ilton received the first prize in the Best Student Presentation competition in the Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics and first place overall at the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress in Sudbury, 2014. Mark’s talk was entitled “A single liquid on a homogeneous substrate can lead to quantized contact angles and running droplets”

  • 03.2014 Our work on the glass transition “A direct quantitative measure of surface mobility in a glassy polymer“ by Y. Chai, T. Salez, J. D. McGraw, M. Benzaquen, K. Dalnoki-Veress, E. Raphaël, and J. A. Forrest has been highlighted in several places: PERSPECTIVES, LE MONDE, LE FIGARO, CNRS HIGHLIGHT, ESPCI HIGHLIGHT, PHYS.ORG, SCIENCE CODEX, SCIENCE DAILY, Science&Vie Junior]

  • 20.10.2013 Sean Ridout wins second place for his talk in the Biophysics/Soft Matter section at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference held in Hamilton.

  • 06.09.2013 Kari Dalnoki-Veress recipient of the President's Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision in Science.

  • 03.09.2013 Rafael Schulman and Paul Fowler win awards for their talks at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 03.05.2013 Prof. James A. Forrest (University of Waterloo) and Kari Dalnoki-Veress are co-recipients of the 2013 CAP Brockhouse Medal. The medal was awarded “for their outstanding collaborative work in the physics of macromolecules in thin films, as well as near surfaces as interfaces. [Two pals share Brockhouse medal for physics]

 
 

  • 02.04.2013 Josh McGraw wins an NSERC Post-doctoral Fellowship which will help to fund his work in Prof. Karin Jacob’s research group in Saarbrücken.

  • 13.03.2013 Oliver Bäumchen wins 2nd prize for his poster in the Chemical and Polymer Physics Division of the DPG (German Physical Society) Spring Meeting entitled Capillary Levelling of Stepped Polymer Films - A Nanofluidic Probe of the Slip Boundary Condition by Oliver Bäumchen, Thomas Salez, Joshua D. McGraw, Michael Benzaquen, Paul Fowler, Elie Raphaël, and Kari Dalnoki-Veress.

  • 12.12.2012 Josh McGraw successfully defends his PhD thesis!

  • 02.12.2012 Josh McGraw is selected to take part in the Padden Award Symposium in the Division of Polymer Physics at the 2013 APS March meeting in Baltimore.

  • 28.10.2012 Richard Parg wins first place for his talk in the Condensed Matter section at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference held in Vancouver.

  • 04.09.2012 Matilda Backholm and Mark Ilton get first place in a three-way tie for their talks at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 02.08.2012 Sara Cormier successfully defends her MSc thesis!

  • 04.07.2012 Physics Today prints article “Canada’s researchers fret over shifts in funding landscape” which quotes Kari Dalnoki-Veress and friends critical of recent NSERC funding decisions. The same article also showcases an image taken by Matilda Backholm of her c. elegans experiment as an example of curiosity driven research.

  • 03.01.2012: Josh McGraw’s paper entitled "Dynamics of interacting edge defects in copolymer lamellae", appears on the cover of EPJE.

 
 

  • 21.12.2011: Josh McGraw’s paper entitled "Dynamics of interacting edge defects in copolymer lamellae", is highlighted by Springer under the title How to build doughnuts with Lego blocks. This highlight has been picked up by many outlets includingSciencedaily, PhysOrg

  • 19.10.2011: Kari Dalnoki-Veress elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

  • 16.10.2011: Paul Fowler wins second prize in the ‘Condensed Matter and Materials Physics’ section for his presentation at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference held in Saskatoon.

  • 06.09.2011: Sara Cormier wins first place for her talk at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 05.08.2011: Mark Healey defends his MSc thesis!

  • 13.07.2011: Josh McGraw, with a talk entitled Capillary levelling and crazing for thin polymer films, is one of twelve participants selected to take part in the "master classes" at the SoMaS School 2011 in Mittelwihr, France.

  • 13.04.2011: Jessica Carvalho’s paper entitled Surface nucleation in the crystallisation of polyethylene droplets, is highlighted in Europhysics News, [highlight article]

  • 28.02.2011: Jessica Carvalho’s paper entitled Surface nucleation in the crystallisation of polyethylene droplets is highlighted in EPJE [Highlight article]

  • 03.12.2010: Jessica Carvalho defends her PhD thesis!

  • 24.08.2010: Robert Peters defends his MSc thesis!

  • 20.08.2010: Kari Dalnoki-Veress awarded the Rutherford Memorial Medal in Physics of the Royal Society of Canada

  • 15.01.2010: Marie-Josee Colbert defends her PhD thesis!  

  • 08.12.2009: Josh McGraw wins second prize for his talk at the annual McMaster Polymer Science conference Polymac 2009.

  • 08.12.2009: Congratulations to Jessica Carvalho who is selected to take part in the Padden Award Symposium in the Division of Polymer Physics at the 2010 APS March meeting in Portland, Oregon.

  • 11.2009: Veeco selects Ian Rowe and Josh McGraw’s Atomic Force Microscope image for publication in their 2010 calender. The image was taken with the Veeco Caliber.

  • 12.2009: Marie-Josee Colbert’s paper on cell adhesion appears in a highlight in Europhysics News

  • 11.2009: Marie-Josee Colbert’s paper on cell adhesion appears on the cover of the European Physical Journal E, 30, 117, (2009). The paper is accompanied by commentaries written by Pierre Nassoy and Al Crosby. [Highlight article in EPJE special issue, highlight article in Europhysics News]

 
 

  • 08.09.2009: Rob Peters wins first prize for his talk at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 26.02.2009: A huge day! Both Andrew Croll and Adam Raegen defend their PhD thesis. Andrew is off to do a PD with Al Crosby at UMAss and Adam will go to work with Guenter Reiter at Freiburg.

  • 10.09.2008: Marc-Antoni Goulet defended his MSc thesis.

  • 12.08.2008: Joshua D. McGraw defends his MSc thesis.

  • 10.09.2008: Joseph Parete defends his MSc thesis.

  • 12.06.2008: Andrew Croll received the first prize in the Best Student Presentation competition in the Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics and second place overall at the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress in Quebec City, 2008.

  • 12.06.2008: Marc-Antoni Goulet received the first prize in the Best Student Presentation competition in the Division of Medical and Biological Physics and third place overall at the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress in Quebec City, 2008.

  • 29.10.2007: Michael Massa, Ph.D. 2006, has been awarded the 2006-2007 Governor General's Academic Medal. The Governor General's Academic Medal is awarded to the graduate student who achieves the highest academic standing in his/her graduate degree program.

  • 22.10.2007: Sara Cormier and Rob Welch were awarded third and first place respectively for their talks at the 43rd annual Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference. Sara won for her talk "Ellipsometry investigations of a morphological transition in thin diblock copolymer films" and Rob Welch won for his talk entitled "Plateau-Rayleigh instability as a probe for the mechanical properties of confined thin polymer films".

  • 03.10.2007: Kari Dalnoki-Veress has been awarded the 2008 John H. Dillon Medal of the American Physical Society "For significant and innovative experiments in glass formation and polymer crystallization at the nanoscale."

  • 04.09.2007: Marc-Antoni Goulet wins first prize for his talk at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 06.06.2007: Matt Farrar received the Governor General's Academic Silver Medal given to the undergraduate who achieves the highest academic standing upon graduation from a bachelor degree program.

  • 01.2007: Andrew Croll’s paper on diblock droplets is featured on the Science Magazine web page and a short review of his work appears in News & Views Nature Nanotechnology

  • 17.11.2006: Andrew Croll’s paper on the "Droplet Shape of an Anisotropic Liquid", Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 204502 (2006), appears on the cover.

 
 

 

  • 24.10.2006: Matt Farrar won first prize for his talk at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference.

  • 02.10.2006: Mike Massa defends his PhD thesis.

  • 28.07.2006: Jessica Carvalho defends her MSc thesis.

  • 15.03.2006: Michael Massa wins the 2006 Frank J. Padden award from the Division of Polymer Physics of the American Physical Society for ‘Excellence in polymer physics research by a graduate student’

  • 04.11.2005: Mike Massa’s work on crystal nucleation which was published in Phys. Rev. Lett.  (92, 255509; 2004) is featured in the “Journal Club” section of Nature (Vol 438, 3 November 2005) by Anthony Ryan.

  • 06.09.2005: Jessica Carvalho wins first prize for her talk at the department's graduate student symposium day.

  • 18.07.2005: Marie-Josee Colbert defends her MSc thesis.

  • 25.02.2005: Andrea Colis defends her MSc thesis.

  • 18.08.2004: Adam Raegen defends his MSc thesis.

  • 18.08.2004: John Hudson defends his MSc thesis.

  • 11.12.2003: Lun Si defends his MSc thesis.

  • 02.09.2003: Andrew Croll wins first prize for his talk at the department's graduate student symposium day. 

  • 08.2002: Kari Dalnoki-Veress receives the Premier’s Research Excellence Award.

  • 30.07.2002: Mike Massa defends his MSc thesis.