Osgoode alumni establish $1.2M Davies Fellows Award to create positive change in legal profession

Osgoode Hall Law School alumni, representing Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, presenting a $1.2 million cheque for the Davies Fellows Award

Osgoode Hall Law School and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, one of Canada’s leading law firms, have jointly announced a $1.2-million Davies Fellows Award that is designed to break down barriers to legal education.

The new bursary is created with donations from Osgoode alumni at Davies with matching funds from the law school.

Every year, the bursary will help support one first-year student in the law school’s juris doctor (JD) program who has demonstrated financial need and exceptional promise.

The successful candidate’s personal and professional achievements will include overcoming obstacles related to financial means; racial, cultural, or gender inequalities; mental health; and physical or learning challenges. The recipient will be known as a Davies Fellow.

The award is renewable for the student’s second and third years in the JD program, provided the student remains in good academic standing and continues to demonstrate financial need and exceptional promise.

Osgoode Law School alumni representing Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP present $1.2 million cheque for the Davies Fellows Award
York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School receives transformative contribution to its No Barriers campaign from alumni working at leading Canadian law firm Davies

“We count among our lawyers at Davies, individuals who have overcome obstacles to achieve excellence in the profession, and we recognize that we have an opportunity to expand access to a legal education to students from equity-deserving groups,” says Osgoode alumna and Davies senior partner Patricia Olasker.

She adds that the initiative reflects the firm’s commitment to creating a more inclusive legal profession by removing barriers that stand in the way of remarkable students. “Our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion is a core value of our firm, and the creation of the Davies Fellows Award is an impactful way for us to turn our values into action.”

“I am so grateful for the amazing support our alumni working at Davies have given to this initiative, which will see generous alumni donations matched by Osgoode to help reduce systemic barriers to law school for students from equity-deserving groups who will, in turn, change the face of the legal profession,” says Mary Condon, dean of Osgoode. “The creation of the award is a transformative contribution to the law school’s No Barriers campaign, which aims to make Osgoode one of the most diverse and inclusive law schools in Canada.”

As the first Canadian law school to adopt a holistic admissions policy 15 years ago, Osgoode has been a leader in making legal education more open, inclusive and diverse, the dean adds.

Learn more at News @ York.

Osgoode RedDress Week honours murdered and missing Indigenous women

Red dress hanging from tree branches beside lonely arboreal highway, stock image banner for missing Indigenous girls awareness

As third-year law students Megan Delaronde and Annika Butler recently wrote out the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, one fact became painfully clear: the Canadian justice system has not solved the vast majority of cases.

Butler, the co-chair of the Osgoode Indigenous Students’ Association (OISA); Delaronde, OISA’s director of cultural and community relations; and a group of other volunteers, wrote out 300 of the stories for OISA’s “RedDress Week” (Feb. 13 to 17), posting them throughout the main floor of the law school along with a number of red dresses. They selected stories from thousands of cases chronicled in a database maintained by the Gatineau, Que.-based Native Women’s Association of Canada.

“There are stories that I have written out that will stick with me,” said Delaronde, a member of the Red Sky Métis Independent Nation in Thunder Bay, Ont.

She and Butler, a member of the Mattawa/North Bay Algonquin First Nation, pointed to examples like a nine-month-old baby girl who died in foster care – no charges were ever laid – or 20-year-old Cheyenne Fox of Toronto, whose three 911 calls just prior to her 2013 murder went unanswered.

“I think a lot of the time this problem stays abstract for people who aren’t Indigenous,” said Delaronde. “One of the things we were hoping to accomplish with our names wall was to show the vastness of this problem and for people to understand that these aren’t just names. Many of them were mothers and the vast majority of these cases have gone unsolved.”

Many of the postings on the wall did not carry a name. “A lot of the names of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) we don’t know,” said Butler, “but we still wanted to hold a place in our hearts for them.”

She noted that official statistics kept by police underestimate the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada compared with records kept by the Native Women’s Association and other Indigenous organizations and communities.

Osgoode Indigenous Students’ Association members, from left: Megan Delaronde, Hannah Johnson, Sage Hartmann and Annika Butler.
Osgoode Indigenous Students’ Association members, from left: Megan Delaronde, Hannah Johnson, Sage Hartmann and Annika Butler.

OISA’s “RedDress Week” this year was the most extensive in the club’s history. Inspired by Métis artist Jaime Black’s 2010 art installation, “The REDress Project,” Red Dress events are typically held in May to raise awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women. But because the academic year is usually over by May, Delaronde said OISA decided to schedule the event in February.

She said the timing seemed appropriate considering one of the latest reminders of the continuing tragedy ­– the recent murders of four Indigenous women in Winnipeg: Rebecca Contois, 24; Marcedes Myran, 26; Morgan Harris, 39, a mother of five children; and a fourth unidentified woman who has been named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman.

“We wanted to ramp it up this year so we poured our hearts into it,” said Delaronde.

The group also organized a trivia night event that raised almost $1,000 for the Native Women’s Association of Canada.

Butler and Delaronde said that OISA’s first-year reps Sage Hartmann (Red River Métis) and Hannah Johnson (Secwepemc Nation) also played a key role in organizing the event, with support from OISA members Levi Marshall and Conner Koe, Osgoode’s student government and Osgoode’s Office of the Executive Officer.

Past and future OISA events

In September, OISA organized a special event for Orange Shirt Day (also known as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation), with guest speakers and Osgoode alumni Deliah Opekokew (LLB ‘77), the first First Nations lawyer to ever be admitted to the bar association in Ontario and in Saskatchewan; and Kimberly Murray (LLB ‘93), who serves as the federal government’s special interlocutor on unmarked graves at former residential schools. In March, it plans to organize a Moose Hide Campaign Day. The Moose Hide Campaign is a nationwide movement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians from local communities, First Nations, governments, schools, colleges/universities, police forces and many other organizations committed to taking action to end violence against women and children.

Deadline extended: Call for graduate/professional student nominations to Board of Governors

Wellbeing Week FEATURED image shows community members entering Vari Hall

The Student Senator Caucus (SSC) at York University oversees nominations for student members for the Board of Governors and makes a recommendation to them based upon the election results. The election of student governors rotates annually between undergraduate and graduate/professional students.

The nomination period has been extended until March 16 at noon.

The Board of Governors appoints its members. The Student Senator Caucus is responsible for nominating those members, and in practice has done so through an election. This year, the SSC has appointed Nyarai Chidemo as chief returning officer and Shawn Yuan as deputy returning officer. Following the election results, SSC will confirm the results and recommend to the Board that the candidate with the highest vote total be appointed to the Board.

This year SSC is accepting nominations for graduate/professional student nominees. Nominations will be accepted starting Monday, Feb. 27 at 9 a.m. The deadline for nominations is March 16 at noon. No late or incomplete forms will be accepted.

For further information including nomination forms, election rules, regulations and important dates, visit the Secretariat’s website or contact Elaine MacRae at emacrae@yorku.ca.

New research reveals loss of local newspapers increases organizational wrongdoing

A pile of newspapers tied with a string

A paper from York University’s Schulich School of Business shows that the decline in local newspapers has led to a rise in organizational wrongdoing within communities.

The media has a long history of serving as a societal watchdog, offering accountability journalism that can keep organizational wrongdoing – such as misconduct, fraud, bribery, tax evasion and more – in check.

Schulich School of Business
The Schulich School of Business

The decline in local newspapers due to financial challenges, however, has had a significant impact on accountability journalism, according to “The Crisis in Local Newspapers and Organizational Wrongdoing: The Role of Community Social Connectedness,” a paper published in Organization Science by two York-affiliated academics.

The paper was co-authored by Mike Valente, an associate professor of business and sustainability at the Schulich School of Business, as well as Tony Jaehyun Choi, an assistant professor in the Business-Society Management Department at Rotterdam School of Management and a former PhD student of Valente.

“Because local newspapers, through their general watchdog function, play an instrumental role in balancing economic and non-economic values, we investigated whether the significant decline in local newspapers in U.S. municipalities weakened the enforcement mechanism that would normally curb organizational wrongdoing,” says Valente.

The two academics analyzed local newspapers and organizations in American metropolitan areas during the period between 2007 and 2015 and found that the decline in local newspapers has led to an increase in opportunistic behaviors from organizations due to the diminishing presence of accountability journalism.

“Our results in fact show that a decline in local newspapers increases organizational wrongdoing,” adds Valente. The academics discovered, however, that another watchdog is gaining strength in the absence of the strong interconnection of accountability journalism and organizational responsibility.

“This relationship is moderated by community social connectedness, which is defined as the dense interlocking network of relationships between local people in a community. Community social connectedness ultimately compensates for the scarcity of local newspapers by essentially replacing news outlets as an enforcement body,” says Valente.

New research casts doubt on belief that spontaneous sex is better

Giant pile of candy hearts

Two studies published in the Journal of Sex Research by PhD student Katarina Kovacevic and Professor of psychology Amy Muise reveals planned sex can be as satisfying as unplanned sex.

The idea that spur-of-the-moment sex is the most passionate and satisfying is deeply ingrained in popular Western imagination, but new research from a York University student and a professor in the Faculty of Health calls this into question. In a new study, the researchers found that planning ahead can be just as sexy as sex that “just happens.”

York PhD student Katarina Kovacevic
Katarina Kovacevic

“There can be a lot of resistance to asking clients to talk about and plan sex more, to work as a sexual team. I think it’s because of what we see in the media, but the funny thing about that is there’s so much planning that goes into those scenes – a whole production team is there, actors memorize their lines,” says Kovacevic, a PhD student at York’s Sexual Health and Relationship Laboratory and registered psychotherapist specializing in romantic relationships and sexual issues.

“What our new study found was that while many people do endorse the ideal of spontaneous sex, there was no difference in their reported satisfaction of their last actual sexual encounter – whether it was planned or unplanned.”

For this research, published Feb. 13, in the Journal of Sex Research, two studies were conducted by Kovacevic, her supervisor Muise, and their collaborators. The first looked at more than 300 individuals in romantic relationships and asked them questions via an online survey. The second, had more than a hundred couples respond for three weeks to daily surveys about their romantic and sex lives. In both cases, they wanted to look at people’s beliefs about planned versus spontaneous sex, but also if these beliefs would translate into satisfaction with actual sexual encounters.

Psychology professor Amy Muise
Amy Muise

In the first part of the study, they did find that endorsing the idea of spontaneous sex being better did correlate with reported satisfaction. While in the second study, when looking at participants’ last sexual encounter, they found there was no difference in how satisfying a sexual encounter was reported to be – based on whether it was planned or happened spontaneously – regardless of people’s beliefs.

“Generally, we did find that people endorsed the spontaneous sex ideal,” says Muise. “But, despite these beliefs, across our two studies we did not find strong support that people actually experience spontaneous sex as more satisfying than planned sex.”

Kovacevic says when therapists like herself talk about planned sex, they don’t necessarily mean scheduling it, and while planning sex may seem like a chore to some, anticipation can also sometimes lead to desire.

“When we suggest that couples or other romantic configurations carve out that time, we’re not necessarily saying you put it into a calendar – like 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, after putting dinner in the oven and before folding the socks,” she says. “But the intentionality behind it can be transformative in the sense that we don’t wait around for the right moment, because sometimes the mood just never strikes, really, for some people, and that might deter them.”

Additionally, Muise and Kovacevic remind us of how much planning goes into the important and enjoyable aspects of our lives, like going on vacation or pursuing a rewarding career. There is no reason sex cannot be the same. Since sex is important to many people, and has numerous health and relationship benefits, it makes sense to prioritize and approach sex in the same way.

Kovacevic says expectations for sex during holidays, anniversaries and birthdays can lead to folks feeling pressure; instead, she recommends that romantic partners plan to regularly spend quality time together, without distractions, to keep the spark alive.

Black excellence centre stage at Word, Sound, Power celebration

Coco Murray performance during Word, Sound, Power 2023 (image: Anderson Coward)

Black artistic talent was centre stage during a showcase of performances on Feb. 8 when the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora presented Word, Sound, Power: An annual celebration of Black Artistic Expression.

Watch the video below for highlights from the well-attended event.

The Black History Month celebration spotlights Black cultural and artistic expression through performance, which this year featured:

• York University doctoral student Miss Coco Murray with Coco Collective with a presentation in drumming and dance;
• Peel District School Board student Marie Pascoe with a spoken word performance;
• a performance by York’s Oscar Peterson jazz ensemble;
• a spoken word performance by Canadian poetry slam champion Dwayne Morgan;
• a performance by York’s R&B ensemble;
• a performance by spoken word artist Ryan Burke;
• a presentation by the Toronto Gospel Choir; and
• a spoken word presenation by York University student Ashley Keene.

York postdoctoral Fellow is Holland Bloorview’s first EMBARK scientist

Recognized for his exceptional contributions to pediatric health care, York postdoctoral Fellow De-Lawrence Lamptey has been named Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital’s inaugural EMBARK scientist. The first program of its kind in Canada, EMBARK (Empowering Black Academics, Researchers and Knowledge creators) fills an important gap in amplifying diverse Black voices in disability research.

Launched in partnership with the Black Research Network, an institutional strategic initiative at the University of Toronto, the EMBARK program addresses barriers that researchers from Black communities face in order to set them up for successful academic careers. Specifically, the network’s mission is to promote and propel the interdisciplinary work of Black scholars at the university and beyond through investment and mentorship.

De-Lawrence Lamptey close-up portrait
De-Lawrence Lamptey

Lamptey was selected from a competitive pool of qualified applicants from across Toronto and surrounding areas. The important work that he will perform at the hospital will support children and youth with medical complexity, illness and injury.

“I am thrilled to join Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and be part of the outstanding work going on here in the field of childhood disability. I look forward to making a positive impact on children and youth with disabilities and families through this exciting opportunity,” said Lamptey.

The EMBARK program offers two scientists the following over a three-year term: start-up funds for their research; principle investigator status; access to advisors from a diverse range of backgrounds; connections to networks and career support; and media profiling to build their personal brands. In his new role, Lamptey will develop and lead an independent research program that advances scholarship in childhood disability, with a focus on meaningfully engaging Black communities.

Previously, Lamptey was one of the inaugural recipients of the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowships for Black and Indigenous Scholars at York University. The program supports up to four scholars every year in any field of study and provides the successful applicants with a salary of $70,000 annually for a two-year term. The important initiative seeks to address underrepresentation in many disciplines and fields, by providing Black and Indigenous scholars the ability to dedicate their time to pursue new research, while accessing the collegial resources, faculty supervision and mentorship. While at York, Lamptey’s research focused on the intersectionality of race/ethnicity and disability among children and youth in Canada, providing him the necessary expertise to succeed in his new role.

Programs like EMBARK and the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowships for Black and Indigenous Scholars actively address the systemic barriers that researchers from Black communities experience in advancing their careers by providing them the opportunities and resources to push the boundaries of knowledge, said Anesa Albert, associate director, communications, recruitment and digital engagement in the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

“Work performed by Black scholars in these programs results in better science as well as positive change,” said Albert.

Lamptey will formally begin in his position as EMBARK scientist on Sept. 1.

Schulich master’s student earns Gary Whitelaw Strength in Diversity Award

students black diverse woman

An award that celebrates individuals committed to improving diversity and representation in Canada’s commercial real estate industry has been awarded to Silas Jjuuko, a master’s student at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

Silas Jjuuko
Silas Jjuuko

The Gary Whitelaw Strength in Diversity Award was established by BentallGreenOak (BGO) in June 2021, and honours Gary Whitelaw’s tireless efforts and commitment to creating opportunities for underrepresented communities and aims to create pathways for Black, Indigenous and female students in the commercial real estate industry.

As a recipient of this award, Jjuuko will receive $25,000 to support his scholarly activities and research as a student enrolled in Schulich’s Master of Real Estate and Infrastructure program. Second-year MBA students, specializing in the Real Estate and Infrastructure program, are also eligible for the award.

“This recognition will alleviate the financial pressures I have been experiencing. I am honoured beyond words and promise to pursue my education, leadership responsibilities and true representation of the group of students for which this award was intended,” said Jjuuko.

The Gary Whitelaw Strength in Diversity Award not only provides generous financial support, but it also removes additional barriers by offering students, like Jjuuko, the opportunity to gain industry experience and networking opportunities through a paid, 12-month internship program at BGO following graduation.

“This scholarship represents our ongoing commitment to increasing diversity in the commercial real estate industry and our firm belief that collectively we can build diverse talent pipelines by addressing barriers to entry,” said Natasha Soobramanie, principal, EDI & Talent Development at BGO. “We are delighted for Silas as a scholarship recipient and look forward to his ongoing professional contributions to the industry.”

Detlev Zwick, Schulich dean, said “Schulich is grateful for companies like BGO who share our commitment to supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of its programs and we look forward to supporting more students like Silas on their journey to success.”

To learn more about championing student support, please contact Schulich’s Office of Advancement and Alumni Engagement at advancement@schulich.yorku.ca.

Inaugural best paper award goes to York professor, student

glasses and pen resting on notebook

A York faculty member and graduate student have won the inaugural Alexis de Tocqueville Award for the best conference paper on democracy and public opinion, an award given by the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR).

Andrew Dawson
Andrew Dawson

Andrew Dawson, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the Glendon Campus of York University, and Isabel Krakoff, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, were announced as the winners during WAPOR’s 75th conference.

The paper “Political Trust and Democracy: The Critical Citizens Thesis Re-Examined” empirically assesses competing perspectives on the relationship between democracy and political trust. It draws upon data from the World Values Survey, the European Values Study and several other sources to undertake multi-level analyses using a cross-national panel dataset of 82 countries for the period 1990-2020.

The findings suggest there is a strong, negative relationship between democracy and political trust that cannot be easily dismissed as an artifact of model misspecification or response bias.

The authors re-examine the critical citizens thesis by disaggregating political trust into trust in partisan and non-partisan institutions, following recent studies suggesting that there are both theoretical and empirical rationales to do so.

Dawson is a member of both the Graduate Program in Sociology and the Master’s in Public and International Affairs Program and is an associate editor of the Canadian Review of Sociology. His primary areas of research interest are political sociology; violence and development, with a focus on state legitimacy; political and social trust; democracy and the rule of law. He has pursued an empirical and cross-national research agenda in these fields that draws upon both quantitative and comparative historical methods. This research has been published in various sociology and social science journals, including the British Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Science History, World Development, and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

Krakoff is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology. She completed her MA in international affairs with a concentration in global gender policy in 2018 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. before moving to Canada for her PhD. She is currently working on her dissertation exploring the intersection of right-wing populism and human rights claims. Her research interests include political sociology, the study of race and racism, critical sexuality studies, global gender policy, and mixed methods research.

‘Ghostly’ neutrinos provide new path to study protons

close up graphic image of atoms

Researchers in York’s Faculty of Science have discovered a new way to investigate the structure of protons using neutrinos, known as “ghost particles.”

Scientists are that much closer to understanding protons after using a novel technique involving a high-energy neutrino beam to precisely measure their size, which could change how these kinds of experiments are done and answer many more questions, say researchers from York University.

“We need detailed information about protons to answer questions like which neutrinos have more mass than others and whether or not there are differences between neutrinos and their anti-matter partners,” says Tejin Cai, York University postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper “Measurement of the axial vector form factor from antineutrino-proton scattering,” published in Nature on Feb. 1. “Our work is one step forward in answering the fundamental questions about neutrino physics that are the goal of these big science projects in the near future.”

The research involved a series of experiments with neutrinos, often referred to as “ghost particles,” over nearly a decade. It was part of the international MINERvA collaboration, which studies neutrinos at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab).

Magnetic focusing horn used in the beamline at Fermilab that produces neutrino beams for MINERvA
One of two magnetic focusing horns used in the beamline at Fermilab that produces neutrino beams for MINERvA and other neutrino experiments. Photo by Reidar Hahn, Fermilab.

“While we were studying neutrinos as part of the MINERvA experiment, I realized a technique I was using might be applied to investigate protons,” says Cai, who did the research – involving an international team of scientists – while completing his PhD in the lab of Kevin McFarland, the Dr. Steven Chu Professor in Physics and the acting vice-provost for academic affairs at the University of Rochester.

Deborah Harris

They found that the proton radius as seen by neutrinos is 0.73 femtometres – a quadrillionth of one metre.

“When we proposed MINERvA, we never thought we’d be able to extract measurements from the hydrogen in the detector,” says Professor Deborah Harris, a particle physicist in York’s Faculty of Science, a senior scientist at Fermilab and a co-spokesperson at MINERvA. “Making this work required great performance from the detector, creative analysis from scientists, and years of running the most intense high-energy neutrino beam on the planet.”

How do you measure a proton using neutrinos? That’s the novel part of this experiment. The use of a beam of neutrinos to investigate the structure of protons was once thought impossible. The MINERvA group used a high-power, high-energy particle accelerator, which produces the strongest source of high-energy neutrinos on the planet. This new technique offers scientists a new way of looking at the small components of an atom’s nucleus.

Although neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe, they are notoriously difficult to detect and study as they don’t have an electrical charge and nearly zero mass. They are often referred to as “ghost particles” because they rarely interact with atoms, but they play a large role helping scientists answer fundamental questions about the universe.

Atoms, and the protons and neutrons that make up an atom’s nucleus, are so small that researchers have a difficult time measuring them directly. Instead, they build a picture of the shape and structure of an atom’s components by bombarding atoms with a beam of high-energy particles. They then measure how far and at what angles the particles bounce off the atom’s components.

For example, if marbles were thrown at a box, they would bounce off it at certain angles, enabling someone to determine where the box was, its size and shape, even if the box was not visible.

“This is a very indirect way of measuring something, but it allows us to relate the structure of an object – in this case, a proton – to how many deflections we see in different angles,” says McFarland.

A new technique

A computer-rendered neutrino detector schematic as it appears in the journal Nature
A schematic of the MINERvA detector, including the support structure and access platform. The neutrino beam enters the detector from the left. Figure published in Nature.

Specifically, the researchers are hoping to use the technique to separate the effects related to neutrino scattering on protons from the effects related to neutrino scattering on atomic nuclei, which are bound collections of protons and neutrons.

“Our previous methods for predicting neutrino scattering from protons all used theoretical calculations, but this result directly measures that scattering,” says Cai.

McFarland adds, “By using our new measurement to improve our understanding of these nuclear effects, we will better be able to carry out future measurements of neutrino properties.”

What is a neutrino?

Neutrinos are created when atomic nuclei either come together or break apart. The sun is a large source of neutrinos, which are a byproduct of the sun’s nuclear fusion. If you stand in the sunlight, for example, trillions of neutrinos will harmlessly pass through your body every second.

Even though neutrinos are more abundant in the universe than electrons, it is harder for scientists to experimentally harness them in large numbers; neutrinos pass through matter like ghosts, while electrons interact with matter far more frequently.

“Over the course of a year, on average, there would only be interactions between one or two neutrinos out of the trillions that go through your body every second,” says Cai. “There’s a huge technical challenge in our experiments in that we have to get enough protons to look at, and we have to figure out how to get enough neutrinos through that big assembly of protons.”

A chemical trick

The researchers solved this problem in part by using a detector containing a target of both hydrogen and carbon atoms. A target of pure hydrogen wouldn’t be sufficiently dense for enough neutrinos to interact with the atoms.

“We’re performing a ‘chemical trick’, so to speak, by binding the hydrogen up into hydrocarbon molecules that make it able to detect sub-atomic particles,” McFarland says.

To isolate only the information from the hydrogen atoms, the researchers then had to subtract the background “noise” from the carbon atoms.

“The hydrogen and carbon are chemically bonded together, so the detector sees interactions on both at once,” Cai says. “I realized that a technique I was using to study interactions on carbon could also be used to see hydrogen all by itself once you subtract the carbon interactions. A big part of our job was subtracting the very large background from neutrinos scattering on the protons in the carbon nucleus.” 

Cai says the collective expertise of MINERvA’s scientists and the collaboration within the group was essential in accomplishing the research.

“The result of the analysis and the new techniques developed highlight the importance of being creative and collaborative in understanding data,” he added. “While a lot of the components for the analysis already exist, putting them together in the right way really made a difference, and this cannot be done without experts with different technical backgrounds sharing their knowledge to make the experiment a success.”