Grade 12 Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School student Brendon Matusch is one of 45 finalists from the 2018 and 2019 Canada-Wide Science Fairs headed to Expo-Sciences International in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates this weekend.
Held Sept. 22 to 28, Expo-Sciences International brings together some 1,200 students from more than 50 countries to showcase their innovative STEM projects.
Matusch is well known locally for his dominance at science fairs at every level.
This past May, he took part in the 2019 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and received the second place grand award, which put him in the top 50 of 1,800 students worldwide.
His project was called “Improving Particle Classification in WIMP Dark Matter Detection Experiments Using Neural Networks.”
It's very technical, but he spent the summer of 2018 at SNOLAB using machine learning to build an algorithm to classify background radiation that would allow him to potentially isolate dark matter events, if they actually exist.*
*An earlier version of this story included an error. Brendon Matusch's research at SNOLAB took place on the surface, not underground as previously reported.
