Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Faculty of Science

For Current Students

Apply for a summer research award

Michael J. Keen Award

The Keen Award provides stipend funding for a female undergraduate student summer research experience in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences similar to an NSERC USRA. The successful student will work closely with a supervisor in the Department with the goal of exposing the student to scientific research work in general and to specific research in the field of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The tenure of the award runs from June 1 to August 31, 2025.

Undergraduate Summer Research Scholarships - Summer 2025

There are about 70 Faculty of Science-coordinated summer research awards available each year, on a competitive basis, for current undergraduate students. Interested students may apply for an award and indicate the faculty member they’d like to work with. Award winners spend 16 weeks participating in a research project, alongside graduate students and other undergraduates.

Questions? The department has a dedicated faculty member in charge of summer research awards who assists students through the application process.

IMPORTANT: The deadline for submissions is January 24, 2025.

For more information see the department's Funding and Awards page or the Faculty of Science's Summer Research Awards page (NetID login required).

Summer 2025 USRA Opportunities

Undergraduate Student Research Assistantship in the Education for Sustainability Research Group

We are seeking a motivated undergraduate student to join Dr. Tarah Wright and the Education for Sustainability Research Group at Dalhousie University as a USRA for Summer 2025. This exciting opportunity is part of a Tri-Agency-funded project exploring how collaborations between science and the arts can drive cultural change and address climate change challenges. As a research assistant, you will help catalog key contributors to science-arts collaborations, analyze academic literature, and support the development of innovative methodologies in sustainability and arts research. You’ll also participate in a Delphi study aimed at shaping a research strategy for this emerging field. This position offers hands-on experience in interdisciplinary research and opportunities to contribute to publications and academic discussions, all while helping advance Canada’s role in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

If you’re passionate about sustainability, cultural change, and interdisciplinary collaboration, we encourage you to contact us (tarah.wright@dal.ca) for more information.

USRA summer student opportunity in experimental petrology and economic geology

“Understanding formation conditions of dissolution textures on diamond and application to crystallization and eruption conditions of kimberlite magmas”.

Diamond is not only famous gem used in jewelry or the hardest material with many exceptional properties used in modern technological applications, but it is an extremely important mineral for understanding composition and evolution of our planet. As a second oldest mineral with exceptional mechanical and chemical stability, diamond records information about the Earth interior, carries it to the surface, and preserves during long periods of weathering and alteration on the Earth surface. The surface of natural diamonds shows a great variety of dissolution (and growth) features, which geometry depends on the conditions of diamond residence in the Earth interior. This project will use high-temperature experiments to understand crystallization conditions and eruption mechanism of kimberlite magma as recorded in the dissolution features on diamonds. Experiments will be conducted in the Experimental Petrology Laboratory at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The experimental products will be characterized using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).

This project has a possibility to be extended into MSc.

Please contact Prof. Fedortchouk with expression of interest and for more details (yana@dal.ca).
Prof. Fedortchouk’s website: https://dalhousiehighpressurelaboratory.weebly.com/prof-fedortchouk-research.html