Dr. Dean Karlen

Biography

Dean Karlen is the R.M. Pearce Professor of Physics at the University of Victoria. He earned his BSc from the University of Alberta and a PhD from Stanford University. His research focuses on electroweak physics, neutrino physics, detector development, and accelerator development. Since the 1980s, Karlen has participated in significant particle physics experiments, including the Mark-II experiment at SLAC, and the OPAL experiment at CERN, where he studied aspects of the standard model of particle physics through high-energy electron-positron collisions. In the early 2000s, he led the development of the micropattern Time Projection Chamber, a new type of precision detector for future high-energy linear electron-positron colliders. Furthermore, he was a principal investigator on projects funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and provincial governments to develop a superconducting electron accelerator aimed at enhancing isotope production capabilities at TRIUMF as part of the ARIEL project. From 2011 to 2017, he served as the director of the Victoria Subatomic Physics Accelerator Research Centre (VISPA) and has previously worked as a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa prior to joining the University of Victoria and TRIUMF in 2002.

Research Interests