REO program in March 2022

Offered by the Canadian STEM fellowship organisation, the REO program offers high school students the chance to participate in cutting-edge research at universities across Canada. The program enables students to explore the world of research, be immersed in the process of scientific inquiry, and ask questions about possible paths into this field.

We were very lucky to have two excellent and enthusiastic BC high school students, Miriam and Karen, spending the week with us.

We mentored Miriam and Karen in the basics of optical spectroscopy and demonstrated absorption spectroscopy and fluorescence lifetime measurements in the lab. They worked with the measured data and learned the origin of the spectral features. They also tuned into the Chemistry Department's Friday seminar and participated in our weekly group meeting.

Prisms split white light into many colours (wavelengths). We use this process to select different excitation wavelengths in our absorption setup.	Lasers, lasers, lasers!

The screenshot above shows Darshi and me in the lab at USask, and Miriam and Karen joining us virtually to run an experiment. What I haven't said is that Miriam captured this screenshot because neither of us could work out how to use Darshi's phone properly!