Evan Kallenberg

B.Sc. Combined Honors in Physics & Astronomy at UBC

Evan was born near Washington D.C. where he has many fond childhood memories visiting national monuments and memorials with his family. At the age of 6, Evan moved with his family to San Diego, California where he enjoyed many outdoor activities such as backpacking, skateboarding, and going to the beach. Ever since he was a Boy Scout, camping and backpacking acted as his release from stress and his retreat to the genuine beauty of nature.

Evan participated in several sports through out middle school and high school including soccer, rugby, and rowing. These sports taught Evan the value of discipline, grit, and teamwork which he has carried through the rest of his life. Over time, he became increasingly interested in the night sky and Astronomy. Once he made enough money from his line cook job in high school, Evan purchased his first telescope which granted him a window in to the frontier that constantly lies above our heads. After that, Evan's high school experience transformed into an obsessive quest for all things science. Most of his free time was spent reading scientific articles or watching Youtube videos on astronomy, physics, and engineering. After getting accepted in to UBC, Evan continued this obsession in his studies as
he majored in Physics and Astronomy.

During Evan's five year UBC experience, he had two wonderful co-op experiences. The first was an engineering physics position at TRIUMF (a particle accelerator located down the street from UBC) where he worked on the design of the new Beta NMR spectrometer for biological applications. This instrument will be used to study human protein structure and dynamics with substantially higher precision than conventional NMR techniques. Evan's second co-op experience was a 4 month research position in Wurzburg, Germany where he learned how to manufacture cutting-edge two dimensional electronic devices to study several quantum transport phenomena. In Evan's last year at UBC, he completed his undergraduate thesis by simulating the trajectories of recoiling ions from nuclear fusion reactions that are generated in the EMMA spectrometer at TRIUMF. EMMA is used to study how the heavy elements in the universe are generated during supernova explosions. After working for the UBC Department of Computer Science in his last term by teaching 1st year undergraduate students the fundamentals of coding, Evan realized how much he enjoyed teaching. He became fascinated with how
teaching methods can be adjusted to best fit each student's preferred method of learning.

Today, Evan continues his physics and engineering work on the Beta NMR project at TRIUMF as a Junior Physicist. Evan is also very excited to have the opportunity to reveal some of the natural wonders of the universe to younger students by tutoring math and physics at the Rasul Learning Group. However, he still reserves time to retreat back to his origins in the outdoors where Evan continues to backpack, camp, and now snowboard.