Environment
Perimeter offers a broad range of opportunities for PSI students to collaborate within the scientific community and beyond through social activities, outreach initiatives, and cultural events.
Activities and excursions
Researchers, students, friends, and families enjoy a variety of organized events. These include:
- Community Nights in Perimeter’s Black Hole Bistro
- homecoming BBQs
- picnics along Silver Lake in the adjacent park
- canoe trips
- Halloween activities
- Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Chinese New Year celebrations, and many other yearly events.
The Institute’s physical fitness area provides a wide variety of gym equipment and activities from squash to yoga. And further afield, Perimeter organizes summer day-tripping excursions to canoe the Grand River, and winter treks to ski and snowshoe at the Blue Mountain Resort. Other activities include ice hockey at the nearby indoor rink.
Many enjoy running and participating in marathons in Waterloo, Toronto, and Ottawa. The Institute also helps foster participation by interested individuals and small groups in a variety of sporting activities throughout the region via soccer leagues, tennis clubs, rock climbing associations, swim clubs, and a variety of organizations.
With two universities, a college, think tanks, the high-tech sector, and many business start-ups in the area, there is also opportunity to visit other centres, enjoy stimulating talks, and make new friends who value science from new and interesting points of view.
Learn more about Waterloo and beyond.
Perimeter Outreach opportunities
Contributing to Perimeter's dynamic environment is a commitment to year-round Educational Outreach opportunities for students, teachers and members of the general public. The programming involves events held at Perimeter, across Canada, and around the world. These include student science camps, teacher training workshops, special festivals for the public, and more.
Conversations at the Perimeter is the latest evolution in Perimeter Institute’s commitment to sharing the power and wonder of science with the world. The series features informal discussions between top scientists and two co-hosts, and is available on all major podcast platforms as well as on Perimeter’s YouTube channel.
Perimeter’s Public Lecture Series fills the Institute with hundreds of science enthusiasts, and attracts another 5,000 people online per live event. The focus of each talk varies, and often includes presentations by preeminent scientists who are visiting Perimeter. Past guest speakers include Edward Witten, Leonard Susskind, Sara Seager, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Gabriela Gonzalez, Sir Roger Penrose, Paul Steinhardt, Fay Dowker, Priyamvada Natarajan, and many others.
On some occasions, PSI students take part in public events and connect with science enthusiasts around the world on social media platforms during live events. Past examples include discussion and audience Q&A on the future of physics.
Inspiring the next generation is key, and informal career Q&A sessions with keen high school students are offered several times a year. In addition, Perimeter Institute's Communications and Publications teams provide media-skills-building opportunities and science-writing insights to help you share your work and talk to journalists.