Mount Allison's David Hornidge Wins $400K ResearchNB Grant for Collider Detector Work

An international particle collider that will not fire until about 2035 is already shaping undergraduate careers in Sackville.

Mount Allison University said on Oct. 29 that physics professor David Hornidge received $400,000 from ResearchNB's Impact Fund for work on the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) planned at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

Detector hardware, modelling — and AI

Hornidge's group is contributing people and equipment to the barrel calorimeter, part of the collider's detector, plus modelling and simulation. Students will help develop those systems, including using artificial intelligence and machine learning to study how detectors will perform.

The funded project is titled Research and Development for the Electron-Ion Collider. ResearchNB's money helps leverage a $5.34-million Canada Foundation for Innovation grant led by the University of Manitoba, with Mount Allison, the University of Regina and the University of Victoria as co-applicants.

Hornidge credits Mount Allison's Research Office with helping secure the support and with spotting a path to bring New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) engineering in as a partner.

Talent pipeline before first collision

"This is a long project. This EIC probably won't fire up until 2035," Hornidge said. "But from now until then, we have brilliant students being trained hands-on to become future engineers, scientists, researchers, and professors. Initial investments like this one can come back three or four-fold in future output."

Across his lab, students work with electronics and detectors, collect and analyse data, and learn specialized software. He has taken undergraduates to an accelerator lab in Mainz, Germany, almost every summer since joining Mount Allison in 2003. One former student spent three years on the EIC project as an undergraduate and is now in a PhD program at MIT.

Skills in computing, electronics, AI and advanced instrumentation travel beyond particle physics — into further research, industry or startups. For Mount Allison and New Brunswick, Hornidge argues, that impact starts long before the first electron-ion collision.

Sources

• Mount Allison: David Hornidge receives $400,000 from ResearchNB's Impact Fund: grant amount; EIC at Brookhaven; barrel calorimeter and modelling; AI/ML student work; project title; $5.34M CFI leverage with Manitoba, Regina and Victoria; NBCC partnership opportunity; Hornidge quotes; Mainz summers since 2003; MIT PhD note
• David Hornidge faculty directory: Professor, Department of Physics, Mount Allison
• ResearchNB: provincial research funder; Impact Fund
• Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory: planned facility
• New Brunswick Community College: engineering partner opportunity named in the Mount Allison release
• Canada Foundation for Innovation: $5.34M research infrastructure grant
• University of Manitoba: CFI grant lead
• University of Regina: CFI co-applicant
• University of Victoria: CFI co-applicant
• Brookhaven National Laboratory: EIC host lab
• MIT: PhD destination for former Hornidge student