The Ripple Effect

Douglas Wallace at Dalhousie's Aquatron research facility (Danny Abriel photo)

[Def.] Lead: provide access to; bring to a certain position or destination (The Canadian Oxford Dictionary)

Dalhousie University has received a prestigious Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Ocean Science and Technology from the federal government.

Chairholder Douglas Wallace (PhD’85), a chemical oceanographer, will return to Dalhousie in August 2011 to establish and lead the CERC research program valued at $10 million over seven years.  Dalhousie will add a further $24 million for a CERC Research Unit and is expanding oceans research space in the Life Sciences Centre.

“It’s a new level,” says Dr. Martha Crago, vice-president research. “We will absolutely become international leaders. And that’s what these chairs were designed to do, to take something that was a strength area but move it up to the next level, so that Canada truly becomes an international leader in the area.”

As Dalhousie prepares to welcome Dr. Wallace, it’s important to note the efforts that made his arrival possible. An intensive, two-phase CERC proposal process was completed by a multi-departmental team. 

“People really came together and showed incredible institutional loyalty and loyalty to the science,” says Dr. Crago, noting the leadership of Dr. Keith Thompson, professor with the Departments of Mathematics & Statistics and Oceanography, and holder of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Marine Prediction and Environmental Statistics.

Lead: be pre-eminent in some field

Dr. Wallace is currently professor of marine chemistry at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) and the University of Kiel in Germany.

He’s been a leader of numerous research projects including International SOLAS (Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study) and the German Research Foundation’s Sonderforschungsbereich 754 (Climate-biogeochemistry interactions in the tropical ocean).

With his CERC research group – which will include post-doctoral fellows, technicians, research associates and students – Dr. Wallace says he’ll “work to make Halifax/Dartmouth one of the leading international centres for research into how CO2 and other greenhouse gases are exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere.”

“We don’t seem to show any signs of reducing how much CO2 we’re emitting and I think we need to know whether there are nasty surprises ahead,” he says. “At the moment we know, probably, that the amount of CO2 staying in the atmosphere, that fraction, if you like, is gradually increasing.  ...That’s partly because the ocean is taking up proportionately less and less. But conceivably in the future that could change, and we have to have models to predict and strategic observations to cross-check the models.”

Dr. Julie LaRoche (MSc’81, PhD’86), a marine microbiologist, will join her husband, Dr. Wallace, at Dalhousie. She’s a professor of biological oceanography at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) and the University of Kiel.

Upon her arrival at Dalhousie in 2012, it’s expected Dr. LaRoche will be a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biology and Physiological Ecology of Marine Phytoplankton. As well, she will be a professor in the biology department and part of the CERC unit.

Her research focus “will be looking at marine microbial communities and how they might evolve with the changing pressures on and the phytoplankton control a lot of the large element cycles that we have today,” she says. “So nutrient cycling, fish production, it’s all dependent on microbes.”

Lead-in: an introduction, opening

The couple met at Dalhousie, a time they remember fondly. “Our lives revolved around the Life Sciences Building and the Grad House,” Dr. Wallace says. “We were just a whole crowd of graduate students in oceanography and biology. We would do a lot of things together and we spent an awful lot of time in our slightly subterranean offices.”

There was still time for outdoor recreation. Dr. LaRoche recalls clambakes, and Dr. Wallace an intramural soccer team, whose players are now as far away as Tasmania and Essex. “We weren’t very good at soccer, but boy, there were some pretty good oceanographers and geologists and biologists on that team,” Dr. Wallace says.

Academically, the couple says their time at Dalhousie served them well. “I think that the four courses that I had in the oceanography department – we had to take chemical, biological, physical and then geological oceanography – have set me up really well to understand how the oceans work,” says Dr. LaRoche. 

Leading: guidance, leadership

Drs. LaRoche and Wallace will share their understanding of how oceans work – an area lending itself to interdisciplinarity – with students. 
Interaction and collaboration is a hallmark of the CERC unit which will include seven new hires (Dr. LaRoche, two Tier 2 Canada Research Chairs, two NSERC Industrial Research Chairs, an endowed chair and a Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust Chair). This is in addition to researchers currently at Dalhousie who are engaged in work related to the CERC focus. Planning is also underway at Dalhousie for an inter-institutional marine research institute. If this comes into being, Dr. Wallace will be its scientific director.

Like ripples, circles will broaden to encompass other collaborations. The international Ocean Tracking Network (OTN), based at Dalhousie, is a leader in tracking marine animals. Dr. Crago says some of the data Dr. Wallace will obtain on oceans’ chemical properties will come from OTN receivers.
 
Dr. Wallace also hopes to strengthen transatlantic ties between Halifax and Kiel. “A scientific partnership between these two major centres of marine science would be of mutual benefit and could promote access to the broader European research scene for my new Canadian colleagues and students,” he says. “The Maritimes have an excellent set of small to medium-size companies involved in the marine sector and I’m sure that they could benefit from even closer involvement with European institutions and research projects.”

Leadoff: an action beginning a process

For Dr. Wallace, his return to campus isn’t as much about coming back to the place he studied as moving forward with Dalhousie today.

“Through studying at Dal, I know something of the traditions and ways of doing science in the Maritimes as well as the capabilities of local institutions and companies. But for me it’s not a matter of coming full circle. I think it’s really a chance to start something new, but with the benefit of knowing that the capability exists to do something special.”