Chris Ruiz is a Scientist in the Physical Sciences Division, TRIUMF, and the group leader for the DRAGON facility. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Victoria. 

He started out life as a 'wannabe' astronomer, studying a Bachelor's of Science degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh. At the end of his undergraduate degree, Chris got his first taste of experimental nuclear physics through a laboratory project studying Bell's inequality and its ramifications for quantum physics, via a really neat experiment using radioactive sodium-22. From then on he was hooked, taking a PhD with the Edinburgh Nuclear Physics Group, studying prospective indirect methods of obtaining the important ¹⁵O(a,g)¹⁹Ne stellar reaction rate at the Louvain-la-Neuve Cyclotron Research Centre in Belgium, and also the first post-accelerated radioactive beam experiment at ISAC: the resonant elastic scattering of sodium-21 on protons - requiring development of a multi-channel R-matrix code.

Chris then joined the DRAGON group as a Research Associate in 2003, eventually leading the ²⁶Al(p,g)²⁷Si measurement. After a short stint as a Research Associate with the University of York Nuclear Physics Group, heading the TRIUMF side of the development of the SHARC silicon barrel array, Chris was hired as a TRIUMF Board-Appointed Research Scientist in order to head the DRAGON Group in 2007. Since then, Chris has been actively involved in shaping nuclear astrophysics research at the lab along with his colleagues. In addition to the DRAGON project, Chris currently spends time working with the TUDA facility. Chris was the project leader for the ISAC Implantation Station, a facility that allows the preparation of high-quality long-lived radioactive targets for use in charged-particle induced and neutron induced reaction experiments.

Chris is a past Chair of the TRIUMF Users Group Executive Committee and former member of the Subatomic Physics Experimental Evaluation Committee. He is current Chair of the TRIUMF Undergraduate Student Scholarship Selection Committee.

Chris enjoys sailing, snowboarding, playing classical, folk and rock guitar, rock climbing, scuba diving, shooting, and attempting to cultivate an organic garden. He is also a motorcycle enthusiast. 

Iris is a "lunar-tic": she always wanted to become an astronaut and be the first woman on the moon since she observed it with a telescope built by her father and watched "For all mankind" in 1989. Her dream almost came true when she joined the European Space Agency's (ESA) Astronaut Selection Programm in 2008. Unfortunately she had to stay in a lower earth orbit - but she is willing to spend her weekends hopping around on the Moon as soon as Star Trek's transporter is working properly...

She has a Master (Diplom) in chemistry from the University of Mainz/ Germany and graduated at the University of Basel/ Switzerland as "Dr. phil. nat" in astrophysics. During her PhD thesis she spent 2 years at the Research Center (KIT) in Karlsruhe/ Germany torturing the old 3.7 MV Van-de-Graaff accelerator named "Lolita" on a daily basis while measuring capture cross sections of dozens of isotopes and developing the KADoNiS database (www.kadonis.org).
After postdoc stays in Karlsruhe and the TU Munich she got a prestigeous 5-year grant from the German Helmholtz association for a Young Investigators Group ("LISA- Lifetime Spectroscopy for Astrophysics") which she led at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt/ Germany until June 2015. Since September 2013 she is working at TRIUMF and is in charge of the beta-delayed neutron program - craving for more and more neutron-rich isotopes! For this program she got awarded a NSERC Discovery Grant and a Discovery Accelerator Supplement in 2014:
http://www.triumf.ca/research-highlights/awards-honours/nserc-discovery-grant-for-isotopes

Since 2015 she is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria and the Scientific Coordinator of the NSERC CREATE program IsoSiM (Isotopes for Science and Medicine, isosim.ubc.ca).

Her field of expertise is experimental nuclear astrophysics (heavy element nucleosynthesis) and nuclear physics (decay properties of exotic nuclei). Iris is the group leader of the Exotic Decay Spectroscopy Group (https://www.triumf.ca/node/39190) which investigates decay modes that occur only in very neutron-rich nuclei and in highly-charged ions with no or only a few electrons. The two experimental setups that are presently used for our research are located at RIKEN Nishina Center in Wako, Japan and at the Experimental Storage Ring at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany.During her time at GSI in Darmstadt her research group developed the particle detector CsISiPHOS for the future storage ring CR and radiation-hard diamond detectors for the Super-FRS at FAIR. Her main field of research is the investigation of half-lives and beta-delayed neutron emission probabilities of very neutron-rich isotopes with the Spanish-German neutron detector BELEN and the University of Guelph-born Canadian "poster boy" neutron detector DESCANT (as featured in Maclean's Magazine: https://twitter.com/macleansmag/status/684190168929169408 ).

When Iris is not trying to unravel the origin of the elements, she is a passionate team handball, volleyball, and soccer player and a veteran of the famous "Unified Field Heroes" which tragically lost the GSI soccer cup final 2013 after penalties. But she could prove that female scientists use their head not only for hair styling and thinking... As new resident of the we(s)t coast she tries to understand why one needs ice to play hockey (too slippery) and why no one here knows what team handball is (no, no walls!).

In her sparse free time left by travelling and science, she likes to
- relax with a good crime thriller at Kits beach,
- find out who makes the best sushi in Vancouver (Ajisai or Hitoe?),
- play (beach) volleyball and badminton. Or whatever ball or birdie she can catch/throw/hit.

Here are the links to two recent interviews she gave:
http://www.helmholtz.de/en/article/the-path-is-never-straight-and-narrow-3538/
http://www.iop.org/careers/working-life/articles/2016/page_66773.html

Petr Navratil graduated with a M.Sc. in Physics from the Charles University in Prague and continued with his Ph.D. studies in Nuclear Physics at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Petr gained research experience as a postdoc at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and later at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he started his work on ab initio calculation for light nuclei. Petr then spent 10 years as a staff physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he continued to develop the ab initio approaches to light nuclei focusing in particular on nuclear reaction applications. Petr then join TRIUMF in October 2010 as a Research Scientist in the Theory Group.

Reactions important for astrophysics, such as ⁷Be(p,γ)⁸B, ³He(α,γ)⁷Be or the famous ¹²C(α,γ)¹⁶O are hard or impossible to measure at energies at which they occur in the stellar environment. The measurements are typically performed at higher energies and then extrapolated to the energy of interest. Predictive first-principles nuclear theory of these reactions is then essential. Even if low energy measurements are achievable in underground laboratories such as LUNA, the beam-target experiments suffer from electron screening absent in stellar environment. Again, the predictive nuclear theory becomes indispensable to extract the correct physics. The ab initio approach Petr has been developing, No-Core Shell Model/Resonating Group Method (NCSM/RGM), reached the precision to address these issues. An example of recent (and first ever ab initio) investigations within the NCSM/RGM include the ³He(d,p)⁴He fusion calculations relevant to the primordial nucleosynthesis and the calculations of the ⁷Be(p,γ)⁸B capture reaction important for the solar neutrino physics and the Solar Model. Ab initio calculations of the ³He(α,γ)⁷Be reaction are ongoing.