In this seminar I will give a short overview of the ISAC facility at TRIUMF, with a focus on the LaBr ancillary array I developed for GRIFFIN. GRIFFIN is an array of 16 HPGe clovers with a superb efficiency and energy resolution employed in beta decay experiments (similar to IDS). When coupled to the LaBr array, it allows for the measurement of excited-states lifetime down to ~10 ps, which are a fundamental observable when extracting transition strengths, a key ingredient to unravel the nuclear structure.
As an example of a fast-timing experiment, I will present the latest results on the neutron-rich barium isotopes, which have been established as a region of permanent octupole deformation.