Space is the limit for the U of A’s top undergraduate student

Science graduate Christopher Moore has received three of the University of Alberta’s most prestigious undergraduate honours. (Photo: Supplied)

Science student Christopher Moore has achieved a rare academic sweep by joining a select group who have convocated with a trio of the University of Alberta’s most prestigious undergraduate honours. 

Moore has been awarded the Lieutenant-Governor’s Gold Medal, given to the top graduating student in a Faculty of Science honors program; the Governor General’s Silver Medal, awarded to three undergraduate students across the institution who achieve the highest overall academic standing upon convocation; and the Rt Honourable CD Howe Memorial Fellowship — cementing Moore’s status as the convocating student with the highest overall standing throughout his undergraduate degree.

His remarkable journey at the university was shaped by a tough choice at the outset between computing science and physics. Ultimately, the honors particle physics program won out, allowing him to combine his computational skills with investigating the elementary building blocks of the universe.

The program also saw Moore spend the last two summers conducting neutrino research at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, respectively. His academic momentum continues into this summer as he steps into a data analytics role with IceCube. This fall, Moore will return to the U of A to begin his master’s degree program in particle physics under the supervision of Dr. Juan-Pablo Yáñez.

“Particle physics in particular is exciting to me because it is currently standing on the edge of the unknown,” Moore says. “The prospect of finding hints of ‘new physics’ — whether that’s uncovering the exact nature of neutrino masses or discovering unexpected interactions that break our current models — is thrilling to me.”