This summer marked the 20th year of the Students on the Beamlines initiative, allowing high school students the opportunity to experiment with the Canadian Light Source.

Nearly 1,500 high school students from nine provinces and two territories in Canada, as well as international locations, have been hosted by the initiative in that time.

In 2016 the Carlton Comprehensive High School in Prince Albert had the chance to attend. Within the group of high school students was Levi Lundell. Lundell is now a PhD candidate in the department of soil science at the University of Saskatchewan. His high school had done an experiment on how to reduce blackleg disease in canola.

Levi says although he wasn’t in his senior year at the time of the initiative, the experience helped to push him to choose science in post-secondary.

“These people who are clearly serious about being scientists and doing good work there, are very highly qualified at the CLS, gave us high schoolers the time of day, and were actually very interested in what we were doing and very helpful. I definitely carried that forward into the rest of high school.”

People in the public who want to see the CLS can take an online or in person tour. Tours run for about an hour each and are completely free. Tours can be booked on the CLS website.