Congratulations to Aaron Farrell, a fourth year honours physics student from Meagher’s Grant, NS, who has been named StFX’s 2010-11 recipient of the prestigious Barrick Gold Scholarship.

To be eligible for this $4,000 scholarship, the recipient must be the top student in a science program, and be entering the final year of study toward a first degree.

Aaron, who graduated at the top of his class from Musquodoboit Rural High School in 2007, has already enjoyed a stellar three years at StFX.

After his second year, he earned a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Award, an honour that allowed him to spend the summer doing research under physics professor Dr. Brandon van Zyl. 

As part of their research work, he was given first author credit for a paper he wrote with Dr. van Zyl, entitled Universality of the energy spectrum for two interacting harmonically trapped ultra-cold atoms in one and two dimensions. They submitted their findings to The Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. It was accepted, and published in January 2010.

In Feb. 2010, he won first prize for best student talk for his presentation at the Atlantic Undergraduate Physics and Astronomy Conference held at Acadia University.

In June, he attended the Canadian Association of Physicists annual Congress at the University of Toronto, where he again won first prize for best poster presentation in theoretical physics. Even more impressive is the fact this competition is typically only for graduate students.

He was also recently chosen to participate in the University of British Columbia’s “Rising Stars of Research” event in August.

Aaron received another NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award following his third year and he spent this past summer investigating both the mathematical physics of quantum contact interactions and the density functional theory of linear potentials, again under the supervision of Dr. van Zyl.

Their work has been submitted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Physics. They are awaiting a response on the review process.