Message from the Chair

The Department of Physics & Astronomy is committed to McMaster’s tradition of strong, innovative undergraduate and graduate teaching programs that link to strong, innovative research programs. Our integration of teaching and learning creates a whole that is greater than the parts.

We are a medium-sized Department of 22 full-time, research-active faculty, more than 100 graduate students, and about 10 postdoctoral researchers, with an upper year cohort of more than 100 undergraduate students. Our Department also reaches thousands of McMaster undergraduate students through foundational and general interest courses in physics, astronomy, and general science education. Students are able to work closely with our researchers, letting them become active participants in research projects as early as their second year.

For high school and Level I undergraduate students, Physics & Astronomy offers one of the most flexible and broadly applicable programs. Our core Honours Physics program offers ample open electives for minors in many areas. Past students have obtained minors in Music, French, Philosophy, Chemistry, and Mathematics, or for pre-requisites for medical school. Alternatively, students can use these electives to follow suggested course lists for Theoretical Physics or Experimental Physics, or for a formal specialization in Astronomy, Medical and Biological Physics or Co-operative Education (Co-op).

Small class sizes in our specialist courses ensure individual attention and mentoring. In our larger, foundational courses, we stress modern interactive peer-teaching methods that target a conceptual understanding. Physics students can benefit from research opportunities through co-op, summer research positions, and a senior project course working one-to-one with a faculty member.

We involve graduate students in forefront research areas during their thesis research. Our major research specialities are: Astrophysics, Quantum Condensed Matter Physics, Medical Physics, and Soft-Condensed Matter & Biophysics. The Department also has a research group in Subatomic Physics in partnership with the Perimeter Institute. We offer M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in all of these areas.

Interdisciplinary research is a great strength of the Department. We have many links with other departments and schools in Faculty of Science, and with the Faculties of Engineering and Health Sciences. Our faculty members are active members in a number of important interdisciplinary institutes at McMaster, including the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, home of the most complete crystal growing laboratory in Canada, the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscope, and the Origins Institute , which focuses on collaborative research on the origins of space and time, the chemical elements, and life.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the benefits of joining our Department. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Alison Sills,
Chair, Department of Physics & Astronomy
pa_chair@mcmaster.ca

Research Interests: Blue Straggler Stars, Globular Cluster Formation and Dynamics

In my research, I use knowledge of stars and stellar evolution to understand unusual stars in dense places, their interactions and their effect on their environment.

A selection of questions that my group is interested in:

Blue Straggler Stars
- What are the expected pulsation characteristics of collisional & mass transfer blue straggler stars? Are those in agreement with the observations?
- What happens to the angular momentum in a stellar collision and during the subsequent evolution of the product? Is this the same or different for binary mass transfer products?
Globular Cluster Formation and Dynamics:
- How can we explain the multiple populations now seen in globular clusters? Are the current explainations viable? What other ingredients are required to fully understand this problem?
- What are the connections between local clustered star formation and the formation & evolution of globular clusters?

I answer these questions using a variety of theoretical techniques and computer codes. Depending on the situation, I use stellar evolution codes, smoothed particle hydrodynamic codes or stellar dynamics codes, running on computers which range from laptops to supercomputers.

I am an active member of collaborations with researchers from Canada, the US and Europe, including the MODEST (MOdelling DEnse STellar Systems) collaboration and the MYStIX collaboration.

Short CV

Supervisor Letter:

Alison Sills
Department of Physics & Astronomy
McMaster University

Dear Prospective Graduate Student,

My work is theoretical, and covers stellar evolution, stellar dynamics, and hydrodynamics. I am interested in stellar populations that occur in unusual circumstances, such as stellar collisions in globular clusters. I study both the populations themselves and the information that the populations can give us about the environment they are in. While most of my work involves computer simulations, I also have experience working with optical observational data, particularly from the Hubble Space Telescope.

I have been at McMaster since July 2001. My most recent students worked on observations of globular cluster properties in M87 (with Bill Harris); theoretical models of star cluster formation (with James Wadsley); models of very young star clusters including both the stars and the gas; and on models of globular clusters that were formed in a dwarf galaxy which was then accreted by the Milky Way. I usually take on one or two summer or senior thesis undergraduate students as well. I may have room in my group for an exceptional graduate student this year, and have a variety of projects available, including some involving special-purpose computing hardware for stellar dynamics, binary star modelling, cluster formation and early evolution, and global cluster properties.

Astronomical research is a collaborative process, and I try to treat graduate students as collaborators as much as possible. The first few years of graduate school are an important transition from being an undergraduate student (when the answers to all questions are known) to becoming an independent researcher (when asking the right questions is as important a skill as finding the answers). All my students choose projects based on a combination of their interests and mine. MSc projects are better-defined from the beginning, and tend to involve more input from me, while PhD projects are more often suggested and planned by the students themselves. I encourage students to attend conferences, both in Canada and abroad, and I expect them to publish the results of their research in international journals at all stages.

Please contact me at¬† asills@mcmaster.caif you think this is a research area you might be interested in or if you have any other questions.

Alison

Alison Sills

Professor & Chair

(905) 525-9140 x24189 asills@mcmaster.ca

More Information

Research Interests: Blue Straggler Stars, Globular Cluster Formation and Dynamics

In my research, I use knowledge of stars and stellar evolution to understand unusual stars in dense places, their interactions and their effect on their environment.

A selection of questions that my group is interested in:

Blue Straggler Stars
- What are the expected pulsation characteristics of collisional & mass transfer blue straggler stars? Are those in agreement with the observations?
- What happens to the angular momentum in a stellar collision and during the subsequent evolution of the product? Is this the same or different for binary mass transfer products?
Globular Cluster Formation and Dynamics:
- How can we explain the multiple populations now seen in globular clusters? Are the current explainations viable? What other ingredients are required to fully understand this problem?
- What are the connections between local clustered star formation and the formation & evolution of globular clusters?

I am an active member of collaborations with researchers from Canada, the US and Europe, including the MODEST (MOdelling DEnse STellar Systems) collaboration and the MYStIX collaboration.

Short CV

Supervisor Letter:

Alison Sills
Department of Physics & Astronomy
McMaster University

Dear Prospective Graduate Student,

Please contact me at¬† asills@mcmaster.caif you think this is a research area you might be interested in or if you have any other questions.

Alison

Research Interests: Blue Straggler Stars, Globular Cluster Formation and Dynamics

In my research, I use knowledge of stars and stellar evolution to understand unusual stars in dense places, their interactions and their effect on their environment.

A selection of questions that my group is interested in:

Blue Straggler Stars
- What are the expected pulsation characteristics of collisional & mass transfer blue straggler stars? Are those in agreement with the observations?
- What happens to the angular momentum in a stellar collision and during the subsequent evolution of the product? Is this the same or different for binary mass transfer products?
Globular Cluster Formation and Dynamics:
- How can we explain the multiple populations now seen in globular clusters? Are the current explainations viable? What other ingredients are required to fully understand this problem?
- What are the connections between local clustered star formation and the formation & evolution of globular clusters?

I am an active member of collaborations with researchers from Canada, the US and Europe, including the MODEST (MOdelling DEnse STellar Systems) collaboration and the MYStIX collaboration.

Short CV

Supervisor Letter:

Alison Sills
Department of Physics & Astronomy
McMaster University

Dear Prospective Graduate Student,

Please contact me at¬† asills@mcmaster.caif you think this is a research area you might be interested in or if you have any other questions.

Alison

Faculty of Science

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Alison Sills

Mailing Address

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