News

The Canadian National Committee for the international Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) has announced that Stephanie Waterman is to receive an early career award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to marine sciences. Congratulations Stephanie!

Congratulations to Daniel Wheeler (GEOE), Peter Li (CIVL), Ivan Ma (GEOE), and Owen Liu (MECH) for winning first prize at the Canadian Engineering Competition! Over 150 students from 24 universities from across Canada competed at this year's competition at McGill University, March 3 - 6. The team qualified for the national level following their success at the Western Engineering Competition in the consulting category. Their challenge was to execute and present a comprehensive feasibility study on the 2021 Francophone games cycling events to be held in Bromont, Quebec. "It was a very challenging and realistic problem," Team member Owen Li writes. "We not only had to look at the technical aspects of the problem, but also the social, economic, environmental, and political sides. It really pushed our thinking and problem solving abilities." The team thanks Susan Hollingshead for her support and feedback. The team thanks Susan Hollingshead for her support and feedback.

EOAS mourns the loss of former professor Kurt Grimm. Kurt Grimm was first appointed to the former Geology Department (now part of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences) in 1992 after receiving his PhD from the University of California Santa Cruz. His early research focused upon sedimentary processes. His later work focused upon a synthesis of earth- and life-systems science, sustainability science and conceptual art to communicate science concepts. In 1998 he won the Outstanding Paper Award for the journal Palaios and in 2001 he received a UBC Killam Teaching Award. He retired from UBC on December 31, 2015. He died on February 9, 2016. For more about Kurt,see https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/about/faculty/K.Grimm.html . News

Congratulations to Professor Evgeny Pakhomov on his appointment as Director of the UBC Institute for Oceans and Fisheries! Evgeny has been with EOAS since 2003 studying marine ecology and physical-biological interactions in the oceans. Evgeny is committed to the Institute and I look forward to working with him to advance IOFs world-renowned research and education initiatives, wrote Simon Peacock, Dean of Science.The appointment is effective from March 1, 2016 through June 30, 2019. Discover more of the Institute at http://oceans.ubc.ca .

An international team scientists recently returned from 47-day research expedition to the Atlantis Massif in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists on Expedition 357, part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (http://www.iodpcanada.ca/) and conducted by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (http://www.ecord.org/), collected an unprecedented sequence of rock samples from the shallow mantle of the ocean crust that bears signs of life. EOAS faculty member Dr. Dominique Weis has spent the past two weeks analyzing the returned rock samples on shore in Bremen, Germany. The 31 member strong team seeks answers to how mantle rocks are brought to the seafloor, how the reactions between them and seawater might fuel life in such harsh conditions, and the capacity of such reactions to impact climate through sequestration of carbon dioxide. Dominique and her post-doctoral student Laura Bilenker will follow up with more comprehensive analysis at PCIGR. More information on Expedition 357 can be found here.

Congratulations to PhD students Rowan Cockett, Lindsay Heagy, and Seogi Kang for winning a UBC Library Innovative Dissemination and Engagement Award (IDEA)! The team was selected for one of two IDEAs this year for their project SimPEG: Simulation and Parameter Estimation in Geophysics. The open source project, accessible online at http://www.simpeg.xyz/, provides a flexible framework to handle and experiment with geophysical data. The Award will be officially presented to the team at the UBC Internal Research Awards Reception on Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at the Alumni Centre.