Dr. M.P. Dehnel collaborates with the following scientists and researchers at the present time. A brief description of the collaborations are provided below. The research undertaken by these researchers is not limited to the particular collaborative efforts described here-in. Typically, each collaborator is undertaking research programmes having a much wider breadth and reach.
Dr. C. Hoehr
Collaborations have primarily focused on cerium doped quartz and borosilicate fiber particle detection technologies. Over the years measurements have been made and diagnostic devices developed to detect charged particles, neutrons, and gammas with undergraduate co-op students, and graduate students. Recent and ongoing research in this area includes:
Janina Hohnholz
Janina recently graduated with a M.Sc. from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany under the co-supervision of Dr, C. Hoehr, TRIUMF. As part of her research, she undertook neutron beam measurements with cerium doped quartz fibers and borosilicate fibers at University of Washington’s Scanditronix type Medical Cyclotron to ascertain the efficacy of these fibers for this application together with Crystal Penner. The initial push for this research work came from Dr. Dehnel, but also depended heavily on collaboration with Marissa Kranz, Director of the University of Washington Medical Cyclotron Facility and the former Director, Eric Dorman.
Sam Usherovich
Sam is a Nuclear Medicine Research Associate at TRIUMF under the supervision of Dr. Hoehr. He has advanced a 4-way neutron/gamma detector in terms of design/development but also in terms of experimental verification. This device can be mounted external to a beam pipe and provides non-intercepting beam position information, but also a response that is linearly related to beam current. A recent publication of this work was at IPAC2023, the title of the paper “A Novel Fiber-Optic Beam Monitor”, and the authors were: C. Hoehr, S. Usherovich, M. Dehnel, S. Braccini, P. Casolaro, A. Gottstein, I. Mateu. The work depended heavily on a collaboration between the group’s of Dr. Hoehr at TRIUMF, and Dr. Braccini at the University of Bern.
Dr.Hoehr and Dr. Dehnel co-supervised a TRIUMF/D-Pace Post Doctoral Fellow, Dr. Anand George, per a MITACS/D-Pace funding agreement. Strong support for this project was also provided by Dr. Stephane Melanson, D-Pace. The project purpose was to develop a commercial grade negative hydrogen ion source ~10 mA CW @ 30 keV powered by RF rather than a tantalum filament. This project successfully wrapped up in 2024.
Dr. R. Baartman, TRIUMF
Dr. Baartman and Dr. Dehnel are co-supervising a TRIUMF/D-Pace Post Doctoral Fellow, Dr. Nicolas Savard, per the MITACS/D-Pace funding agreement. Strong support and guidance for this project is also provided by Dr. Gwenael Fubiani, CNRS, and additional guidance is provided by Dr. Thomas Planche, TRIUMF. The project purpose is to investigate implicit Particle-In-Cell (PIC) plasma computations, and to determine if there are any advantages over explicit PIC computations.
Dr. Gwenael Fubiani, UPS Toulouse
Collaborations have been ongoing for several years in the advancement of computational plasma modeling and the modeling of beam extraction from plasmas using both explicit and implicit Particle-In-Cell (PIC) existing and newly developed codes. Dr. Fubiani provides the world-class technical and scientific expertise in this area to guide and educate several young researchers in this area, whilst Dr. Dehnel is active in discovering important problems to solve that are in the territory between discovery science and practical engineering/implementation for applications using ion sources in medicine, energy conservation, semiconductor manufacture, etc.. Recent and ongoing research in this area is being undertaken with the following postdocs and students:
Dr. Nicolas Savard – TRIUMF/D-Pace Post Doctoral Fellow – MITACS funded (see entry above under Dr. Rick Baartman, TRIUMF). Detailed R&D supervision and guidance provided by Dr. Fubiani.
Dr. Anand George – TRIUMF/D-Pace Post Doctoral Fellow – MITACS funded (see entry above under Dr. Cornelia Hoehr, TRIUMF). Detailed R&D supervision and guidance on aspects involving PIC modeling provided by Dr. Fubiani.
Cole Dutchyn – University of Saskatoon – Bachelor’s Co-op Student at D-Pace from May-August 2024 – MITACS Funded. Academic Supervisor Dr. Lenaic Couedel, University of Saskatchewan, Industrial Supervisors Dr. M. Dehnel, and Dr. S. Melanson – D-Pace. Detailed day to day R&D supervision and guidance provided by Dr. Savard, and Dr. Fubiani.
Connor MacKenzie – UBCO – Bachelor’s Capstone Project from September 2024 – April 2025. Project instituted by Dr. Dehnel with detailed R&D supervision and guidance provided by Dr. Savard and Dr. Fubiani.
Jasmin Deguire – UVIC – Ph.D. Student who started January 1, 2025. Academic supervisors Dr. T. Junginger, and Dr. M. Dehnel. Funding by MITACS/D-Pace with supervisors for funding purposes Dr. T. Junginger UVIC, and Dr. S. Melanson, D-Pace. Detailed R&D guidance and supervision on science/technical aspects provided by Dr. Fubiani, and Dr. Savard.
Dr. Tobias Junginger, UVIC
Dr. Junginger is a strong link between UVIC and TRIUMF, in terms of supervising many graduate student projects jointly for both institutions. Our collaborations involve jointly supervising a Master’s student, Andrew Paul (graduated December 2023, MITACS funded). Andrew utilized a TRIUMF-type volume-cusp ion source to bombard neutral gas species with negative hydrogen ions. A certain fraction of the time, an electron would be transferred to the neutral gas forming a secondary negative ion species at low energy, which was accelerated by a 10 kV electrostatic accelerator designed and built by the student. The testing was done at a D-Pace ion source test stand. D-Pace onsite supervision and advice was provided by Dr. Stephane Melanson.
Jasmin Deguire – UVic Department of Physics & Astronomy – Ph.D. – UVic/D-Pace funded MITACS project, Jasmin Deguire, who started the degree January 2025. Jasmin will study explicit Particle-In-Cell (PIC) computations of ion source plasmas, and will compare the simulation results to experimental measurements at a D-Pace test stand. Dr. Junginger is the Academic Supervisor, and Dr. Dehnel is the project initiator and co-supervisor.
Ben Warfield – UVic Department of Physics & Astronomy – Ph.D. – Selkirk College funded research. Experiments to take place at the Selkirk Ion-source Research Centre (SIRC). Project initiator is Dr. Oliver Kester, Director TRIUMF Accelerator Division, and the topic is a study of Penning Ion Source technology for ion species with mass less than 30 AMU, and q = A/6 aiming to determine through R&D whether the Penning can achieve sufficient beam currents, beam quality, and source lifetime to be potentially utilized within TRIUMF’s OLIS set-up. Dr. Junginger is the Academic Supervisor, and Dr. Dehnel, as the Selkirk Ion-source Research Chair, is the co-supervisor for experimentation at the SIRC.
Dr. Karen Kavanagh, Physics, SFU
Our collaboration is highly dependent on the Helium Ion Microscope in Dr. Kavanagh’s laboratory. The microscope’s positive Helium ion beam is utilized by our jointly supervised PhD student, Philip Jackle (NSERC funded), to strike and pass through a very thin foil resulting in a fraction of the transmitted ions being converted to an energetic negative Helium ion. The research focuses on optimal material choices, and optimal thicknesses to maximize the creation of energetic negative Helium ions.
Dr. Suzie Sheehy, Accelerator Physics, U. Melbourne
Dr. Sheehy and her research group are developing an innovative proton therapy system utilizing permanent magnets. Such a system will minimize set-up times between each patient dose at a different energy, and the system will be energy efficient. Dr. Dehnel helped the group through co-ordinating the donation of a proto-type D-Pace UniBEaM diagnostic device to the group’s test set-up, which utilizes a 3MV Pelletron accelerator. Feedback from the students on the performance of the UniBEaM device has been useful in advancing the technology.
Dr. Seth Veitzer, Tech-X Corp.
Tech-X’s VSIM code is being collaboratively advanced to not only compute the plasma parameters in ion sources for various input constraints and parameter settings, but to then develop sub-routines to effectively extract beams from such ion source plasmas, so the effects of the various input constraints and parameter settings on the beam characteristics as well as plasma parameters can be ascertained. Such advancements will be very useful for academic and industrial ion source and Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) systems designers who must match ion beams properly with regards to an accelerators acceptances in phase space. This is an important innovative development because the commonly used ion-optical codes do not have a means to determine the input beams to a LEBT as a function of the plasma condition.
VSim is a massively parallel simulation tool implementing Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) Particle-In-Cell (PIC) algorithms including self-consistent and energy-conserving models for EM fields, accurate models of plasma chemistry, particle/surface interactions, space-charge, and has a range of diagnostics and built-in analysis tools.
Dr. Andrew Rowe, Mechanical Engineering, UVIC
Our collaboration involves co-supervising an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Capstone project undertaken by Isabel Dinneny to develop a super-conducting coil for a mass spectrometer magnet. The purpose is to explore smaller, and more energy efficient magnets of this type for isotope separation.
Dr. Sravya Tekumalla, Mechanical Engineering, UVIC
Dr. Tekumalla’s research explores additive manufacturing to develop metallic materials for aerospace, automotive, biomedical, and electronics, focusing on microstructure control, texture optimization, and multi-scale mechanical properties. Her projects include designing lightweight alloys, exploring in-situ nanocomposites, and investigating the recycling of metallic waste. We aim to initiate a Master’s project regarding R&D related to ion implantation for semiconductors using the Penning ion source technology. A key goal will be to utilize Dr. Tekumalla’s expertise to increase cathode lifetime.