Congratulations to Canada's 2016 Esri Young Scholar Award Winner and Honourable Mentions

May 17, 2016

Krista Amolins

This year, 42 students from across Canada submitted applications for the Esri Young Scholar Award – nearly double the number from last year! Find out who was selected as the 2016 Esri Young Scholar for Canada and who earned honourable mentions for their work.

The Esri Young Scholar Award recognizes exemplary work in geospatial sciences, whether in the traditional fields of geography and geomatics or any of the diverse fields where location matters, such as health and social sciences, urban planning, ecology and hydrography.

This year's judging panel was comprised of one college faculty member and two university faculty members. Thank you to all of them for their time and effort!

Congratulations to the top ranked students:

Top candidate in a PhD program, and 2016 Esri Young Scholar for Canada: Marie-France Jones, Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick. Her winning paper, “Translating Weather Records and Forecasts into High-Resolution Soil Trafficability Maps,” examines the potential effects of heavy forestry machinery on soil under varying conditions.
Runner-up: Laura Thomson, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa. She is a member of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research, which monitors and seeks to understand the frozen earth (glaciers, ice caps, ice shelves, snow and sea ice). Laura studies the dynamic response of glaciers to long term changes in mass balance.
Top candidate in a Master's program: Olympia Koziatek, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University. Olympia is an ECCE Student Associate and a member of the Spatial Analysis and Modeling Lab at SFU. She developed a 3D approach for modeling potential urban vertical development using Esri CityEngine.
Top candidate in an undergraduate program: Jiahuan (Joyce) Liu, Community Design, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University. The focus of Joyce’s research is food accessibility, specifically access to healthy food in the Halifax Regional Municipality.