GeoEngineering Centre at Queen's

NEWS
	August 2010 Congratulations to Mr. Jeffrey Oke who has recently won multiple awards. He has recently been awarded the Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships and NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship awarded to high-calibre scholars who are engaged in master's or doctoral programs in the natural sciences or engineering. Upon his recent graduation from the Royal Military College of Canada he recently won the following awards: The W.M. Carleton Monk Memorial Scholarship. The W.M. Carleton Monk Memorial Scholarship is awarded to the graduating RETP cadet who obtains the highest marks in academic subjects in the graduating year, provided attendance at a university following graduation. The J.F. Lott Award is awarded for the top thesis mark in civil engineering. Navy League of Canada Prize. The Navy League of Canada Prize is awarded to the best Sea Operations cadet in the graduating class based on high standards of proficiency in each of the four components (academic, sports, military and language ability). The Commander Arturo Prat Leadership Award. The Commander Arturo Prat Leadership Award is awarded in conjunction with the Navy League of Canada to the graduating naval cadet who has demonstrated outstanding leadership, moral values, performance, and potential for future service in the Profession of Arms. OUA East, Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Randy Gregg Award. This award honours the hockey player who best combines outstanding hockey ability, academic achievement and community involvement. Jeffrey Oke is currently enrolled in a Master’s program under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos. We congratulate Jeff on his recent outstanding achievements and welcome him to our team.
	Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos has recently been granted Department of National Defence Grants within the GeoEnvironmental field amounting to $400K. This funding will, in part, support the ongoing graduate work of recent graduate students, Ms. Tina Basso (Queen’s - Masters of Environmental Science) and Mr. David Thebault (RMC – Masters in Environmental Engineering). Congratulations to Dr. Vlachopoulos for his continued success and to Tina and David for their acceptance to their respective programs.
	July 2010 Kerry Rowe has been elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, England. He is one of only six international Fellows, and the only Canadian, whose election was announced at the academy’s annual general meeting in London on July 5. Kerry has previously been elected Fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering as well as professional societies in Canada, USA and Australia. This new honour will be bestowed in a ceremony in the UK this Fall. More info on Queen's website
	June 2010 The International Geosynthetics Society awarded Mr. Saman Zarnani (PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Bathurst) the Young IGS Member Achievement Award based on an international competition. This is an award that is given biennially to a young researcher under the age of 36 in the area of geosynthetics. It is very unusual for such a young person so early in their career to be recognized for outstanding technical contributions to the geosynthetics discipline. Congratulations!
	Dr. Richard J. Bathurst was awarded the biennial International Geosynthetics Society Gold Medal Award for his technical contributions to the advancement of geosynthetics in earth retaining wall technologies. Dr. Bathurst has now won this medal for an unprecedented third time. He was the first Canadian to receive the medal (1994), the first person to receive it twice (1998) and now the first person to receive it three times.
	May 2010 Congratulations to Mr. Kazi Rahman who won the annual graduate student poster competition at the 2010 NoDig conference of the North American Society of Trenchless Technology, held in Chicago during May. His poster outlined part of his doctoral research on three dimensional analysis of pipe bursting, conducted under the supervision of Drs. Richard Brachman and Ian Moore.
	April 2010 The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) recently announced substantial increases in Discovery Grant funding to three Centre members. Dr Mark Diederichs has been awarded funding of $52,000 per year for his project titled “Improved mechanical models & engineering management strategies for the excavation damage zone (EDZ) in sedimentary rocks around underground nuclear waste”. This represents an increase in funding by 126%. Dr Kent Novakowski has been awarded funding of $35,000 per year for his project titled “The role of the overburden-bedrock contact and upper bedrock properties in the recharge and contamination of shallow bedrock aquifers”, a 62% increase in his previous funding. Dr Andy Take has been awarded funding of $62,000 per year for his project titled “Effects of climate and climate change on the soil slopes of our natural and built environment”, a 170% increase in funding. Andy and Mark have also been awarded Discovery Accelerator Supplements of $120,000 to boost their productivity even further over the next few years. These additional awards are exceptional, since these were two of only thirty awarded to all engineering scholars across Canada in 2010. Discovery Grants are a key source of research support to Engineering Scholars in Canada since they promote open enquiry into research problems deemed of interest to the recipients in a way that other project-specific funding cannot. The competition for these funds has become intense in recent years, and these extraordinary increases place the level of support for these three scholars well over the average for their peers across Canada, further cementing the high levels of research support won by our team members.
	March 2010 Congratulations to Ms Azadeh Hoor who has won the 34th Annual Michael Bozozuk Student Forum, a competition for graduate students at Carleton, Ottawa, Queen`s and RMC. Azadeh’s presentation described part of her doctoral research work with Dr Kerry Rowe, examining how the longevity of leachate collection pipes is enhanced by active cooling to mitigate the high temperatures that can develop in landfills.
Picture coming soon	February 2010 Congratulations to MASc student Mr Jon Foster, the first recipient of the ConeTec Graduate Award. This award, endowed by ConeTec Investigations Ltd, provides support to graduate students undertaking research related to cone testing or other geotechnical research topics. Shown here is Mr David Woeller, PEng, the President of ConeTec, making the presentation. Jon is conducting a study on slope stability in the Ottawa Valley under the supervision of Dr Andy Take.
	January 2010 Dr Tom O'Rourke of Cornell University delivered the second Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Geohazards and Large Geographically Distributed Systems" on January 19th. Dr O’Rourke’s lecture was based on his outstanding work on lifeline damage due to earthquakes, and described both his technical contributions (like those associated with his novel buried pipe testing system at Cornell), and a systems view of the interacting issues affecting post-earthquake damage. Dr O’Rourke prepared and delivered this material in 2009 as the 49th Rankine Lecture for the British Geotechnical Association. Funding for the Victor Milligan lecture series is provided by Golder Associates, in memory of Canadian GeoEngineering pioneer, Dr Victor Milligan.
	January 2010 A warm welcome to Dr Kevin Mumford, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Queen`s University, the newest member of the GeoEngineering Centre. Kevin conducted his doctoral training at McMaster University, studying the impact of air bubbles on contaminated groundwater, work for which he received the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal at McMaster University. He then spent 2009 as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Western Ontario before accepting a faculty position at Queen`s. Kevin strengthens our team of groundwater/hydrogeology experts (Bernie Kueper, Kent Novakowski and Vicki Remenda), adding expertise on three-fluid phase flow within porous media, with potential for application to new developments in carbon sequestration and remediation of contaminated ground.
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