SPARC PhD Award 2025 for Dr. Guy Leckenby
21.10.2025 |
This year's SPARC collaboration PhD Prize was awarded to Dr. Guy Leckenby from University of British Columbia, Canada, for his thesis entitled “Exotic Decay Measurements at the Experimental Storage Ring for Neutron Capture Processes”. The ceremony took place in the framework of the 22nd SPARC Topical Workshop at the University of Ioannina, Greece, where the award was handed over by Prof. Reinhold Schuch from the University of Stockholm and the spokesperson of the SPARC collaboration.
The award recognizes excellent experimental work of Dr. Leckenby, focused on the measurement of the bound-state beta decay of fully-ionized thallium (205Tl81+) ions at the Experimental Storage Ring ESR of GSI/FAIR. This measurement has profound impact on the production of lead (205Pb) in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and can be used to help in determining the Sun’s formation time. The results have been published in the journal Nature..
The SPARC PhD Award has been presented annually since 2018 and comes with a prize money of 300 euros. The award honors the best PhD thesis within the collaboration concerning atomic physics with heavy ions at the research facilities of GSI and FAIR. SPARC stands for Stored Particles Atomic Physics Research Collaboration. Currently, more than 400 members from 26 countries belong to the collaboration. They experiment at the existing atomic physics facilities at GSI and prepare new experiments and setups at the future FAIR accelerator. (CP)
