NEWS SPOTLIGHT

EOAS hosted American science-comedian Ben Miller on November 5th for a whirlwind, 24-hour visit. Miller has performed in Victoria and Toronto before (and even in Benmiller, Ontario), but this was his first chance to visit Vancouver and meet the EOAS community. The city greeted him with steady rain, warm crowds, and excellent sushi squeezed in just before his flight home. 

Miller started his visit with lunch on campus with four EOAS graduate students. The group discussed his path from engineering to full-time comedy, his approach to science communication, and the process of shaping complex scientific ideas into accessible, humorous material. Students were particularly interested in how he balances scientific accuracy with storytelling, and how he handles challenging audiences—an experience familiar to any researcher presenting their work.

After lunch, Miller spent a few hours exploring campus and particularly enjoyed the Museum of Anthropology before heading to the Earth Sciences Building for the evening performance. The show sold out, with extra hopefuls gathered in the lobby in case there were any no-shows. EOAS professor Brett Gilley opened the event before Miller took the stage for his one-hour set, Volcano.

Volcano is Miller’s second full-length science-comedy show, developed after he served as the Artist in Residence at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park in 2023—the first stand-up comedian ever selected for that role. During his residency, he learned about the science, history, and cultural significance of Hawai’i’s volcanoes, and transformed those experiences into a show that blends accurate geoscience with approachable comedy. The EOAS audience responded accordingly with “explosive” laughter throughout the performance.

Ben Miller’s Volcano show uses humour to make complex geoscience accessible, and EOAS was thrilled to host an evening that celebrated both scientific curiosity and the value of creative communication. We want to make this an annual event. If you have earth-science inspired comedians that you would love to see grace the halls of ESB next year, please reach out to the EOAS communications team via socialmedia@eoas.ubc.ca. 

Read the full UBC Science article here: Will B.C. get a charge from lithium?

Researchers from the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS) at UBC have uncovered the first major lithium-bearing pegmatite in British Columbia – the Prof pegmatite above the town of Revelstoke on Boulder Mountain – marking an important advancement in understanding the potential of critical mineral resources of the province.

This discovery was led by Dr. Catriona Breasley, a recent EOAS PhD graduate and now founder and Principal Consultant at Criterra. While examining the outcrop, Dr. Breasley suspected that some of the clear crystals with pink rims and a distinctive lustre were lithium-rich petalite—an insight she later confirmed through X-ray powder diffraction. Over three field seasons, she collected more than 100 tourmaline samples from the Prof pegmatite. 

“B.C. is a geologist’s dream, especially up in the alpine where there’s perfect rock exposures,” says Dr. Breasley. “When you find petalite mineralization in one pegmatite, the likelihood you’re going to find much more is quite high. There are hundreds of pegmatites in the area, which are fairly difficult to reach, places that could contain much more significant lithium mineralization than what I found at the Prof pegmatite.”

Crucially, Dr. Breasley also developed a new method that uses tourmaline chemistry as a roadmap to detect lithium hidden deep underground. “We can see a hundred or more pegmatite intrusions in a 15-kilometre band running from Mount Begbie to Boulder Mountain,” says Dr. Lee Groat, Professor at EOAS and PhD supervisor of Dr. Breasley. “However, very few show lithium minerals on the surface — and the Prof pegmatite is the only one that has petalite. What Catriona found was that the chemistry of the tourmaline can tell you if an intrusion is likely to contain lithium at depth. This is important because the surface expression of a pegmatite dike is often small.”

Together, these findings highlight the broader potential of the Revelstoke region for future resource exploration and provide geologists with a new and effective way to identify lithium-rich pegmatites. Their work strengthens Canada’s ability to assess its critical mineral resources at a time when demand for lithium, particularly for rechargeable vehicle batteries, continues to grow.

Watch the UBC Science interviews with Drs. Breasley and Groat:

If you’ve spent time in the Earth Sciences Building, you’ve probably seen the Beaty Biodiversity Museum directly across Main Mall the beautiful whale skeleton makes it hard to miss. What’s less obvious is that EOAS and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum have more in common than just their affinity for enormous hanging sea-creature bones – Dr. Bruce Archibald also sits in the centre of this overlap. 

Dr. Archibald is the Curator of the Fossil Collection at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. He has taken on the task of bringing order to EOAS’s fossil holdings, a research-grade collection that spans the entire geologic column and includes material from around the world. But his ambitions extend beyond cataloguing. Dr. Archibald wants to make UBC a hub for Eocene research. “We’ve got the good stuff,” he says. “If we can focus on this and build what we have here, I think that the Beaty will have a world-class collection.” 

The Eocene fossils of the BC interior document life in upland forests about 51 million years ago,  an exceptionally warm time when many modern plant and animal groups first appeared. An amazingly rich record of insects, leaves, fish, flowers, and rare birds and mammals was fossilised in lakes scattered across the landscape from Smithers, BC through south-central BC to northern Washington, preserving an extraordinary biodiversity. The BC and Washington uplands offered a temperate refuge from the extreme Eocene heat, and Dr. Archibald’s research shows that their ecosystems rivalled the richness of modern tropical rainforests. Fossils from these sites reveal communities where plants and animals that we now consider strictly temperate or tropical coexisted.

The Eocene ended with a drop in atmospheric carbon and an intense plummet in global temperatures that resulted in the extinction, adaptation, and changes in the ranges of many plant and animal species. The divide between those that adapted to cold winters and those that did not offers a window into how modern life might respond to human-driven climate change.  Remarkably, many of the fossils that record this shift are only a short trip from campus

Dr. Archibald makes excursions to these fossil sites regularly, contributing many thousands of specimens to the collection, but fieldwork is only part of what drives him. Dr. Archibald’s unwritten policy is that he makes an effort to engage with local people, to learn about what the fossils mean to them and share his own knowledge. He often gives public talks, helps run field schools for teachers, works with First Nations, and organizes dig-days for kids. This connection  with communities has blossomed in many ways— from collaborating with Indigenous Elders on naming newly discovered species, to long-lasting and rewarding relationships with local fossil enthusiasts. One Princeton resident, Beverley Burlingame, is determined to find a fossil worthy of display at the Beaty Museum; Dr. Archibald believes she deserves an award for amateur paleontology. Another, Daniel Moses from the Colville Reservation, has had Dr. Archibald’s guidance in fostering his love for fossils since he was six. Now pursuing a Ph.D. in paleontology at Arizona State University, Daniel still  joins him in outreach events, connecting communities with their deep past.

Dr. Archibald’s work highlights how a well-curated fossil collection can support both research and community outreach. His steady efforts to strengthen UBC’s Eocene collection reflect that practical goal, and the benefits are already taking shape in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and in the communities he works with.

seed2STEM is a summer research program for Indigenous high school students in Metro Vancouver and Kelowna, with the goal of increasing Indigenous participation in STEM fields. This summer, two EOAS groups hosted students for the first time: the Pacific Museum of Earth (PME) and Dr. Rachel White’s Climate Dynamics group, offering earth science perspectives to the program. As a researcher, the work that seed2STEM does felt like an important contribution towards reconciliation for Rachel White, who stressed the significance of “helping Indigenous high school students see what we actually do here.” 

seed2STEM reduces both tangible and perceived participation barriers—students are paid for their work, financial support for homestays is available for participants from outside the region, and careful student-mentor pairings along with weekly research-focused group activities foster community among the program participants, alumni, and supporters. The program has been running since 2018, beginning with a single student in spinal cord injury research at ICORD. Internships now include neuroscience, engineering, chemistry, biology, math, physics, and, new this year, earth science. 

Returning participants Catalina Claxton and Ila Joseph, who were paired with mentors Oli Beeby and Tirpat Sekhon at the PME, were thrilled to explore non-traditional ways of engaging with science. They primarily worked on displays in the PME gallery—Catalina’s on wildfires and Ila’s on ocean conservation—applying their artistic skills to contribute to science communication at the museum. 

Thatcher Bradshaw, a grade 10 student participating in the program, was paired with graduate students Taylor Swift-Lapointe and Lualawi Mareshet Admasu in the Climate Dynamics Group. Thatcher quickly learned and applied coding skills to earth science data, culminating in an impressive final project on long-term cold spell prevalence in BC. 

At the end of the six-week internship, the students presented their work at a poster session at ICORD, where students could show off what they learned and mentors could be wowed by all the work done across the seed2STEM program. This was just the final event in the array of programming that seed2STEM provided its participants. Notably for Catalina and the PME, a guest speaker on cultural burning and Indigenous wildfire management practices inspired Catalina to include additional content in her wildfire display—material she, and certainly the PME, might not have encountered otherwise.

Working with high school students was a unique opportunity for the mentors to learn from as well. “There are concepts that we learned during undergrad and then into graduate school that you kind of take for granted—you forget that you didn’t know what that was at one point… It was pretty fun just to go back to basics,” shared Taylor Swift-Lapointe. This sentiment was echoed by all the mentors interviewed. Oli Beeby noted that the PME was drawn to the program partly to strengthen its connection with young people. Working with an engaged high-school student for an extended period provides a unparalleled opportunity to refine how you explain your work. 

We’ll end with a quote from Lualawi, who captured perfectly why others should consider hosting a seed2STEM intern in the future:

“’Its quite enriching doing these programs—not even just the sense of contributing to the community and letting students see what you could do in science, but it’s also a really fun experience. There are really bright minds out there. They have really interesting ideas that you haven’t thought about because it’s very fresh minds coming to the program.” 

If you are interested in potentially participating in the seed2STEM program please visit https://icord.org/seed2stem/projects/ to learn about the timeline and process for hosting a student.

Read more about seed2STEM and other organisations and departments participating in it: ICORD-main program description, ICORD-program growth, DMCBH, BCCHR, UBC, UBC-City of Vancouver Leadership in Reconciliation Award

We are proud to share that Dr. Shandin Pete, Assistant Professor of Teaching in the department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS), has been honoured with the 2025 Education Sector Dorothy LaLonde Stout Education Lecture award by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the world’s largest Earth and space science association.

The award recognizes scientists, researchers, and communicators who have transformed our understanding of the world, impacted our everyday lives, improved our communities, and contributed to solutions for a sustainable future. Dr. Pete’s research on Indigenous science methodologies and philosophies, and culturally congruent instructional strategies have contributed invaluable frameworks for modern earth science education. Dr. Pete not only conducts research on these underrepresented perspectives, but also puts this research into action. He is currently working towards the development of courses on Indigenous science at UBC, and communicates his knowledge through a monthly podcast series, the Tribal ResearchSpecialist. 

In receiving this award Dr. Pete joins a distinguished group of honourees who all “reflect AGU’s vision for a thriving, sustainable, and equitable future supported by scientific discovery, innovation and action.”

Selected seminars and panel discussions to learn more about Dr. Shandin Pete's work: KT Connects - Understanding Indigenous knowledge: an insider's theory, UBC Statistics EDU Seminar Series – Data, Information, Knowledge and Understanding: Perceptions from an Indigenous Lens, Astronomy and Space Exploration Society – Astronomy Ethics Panel on Observatories and Indigenous Communities, Space Place Canada – Sky Cultures and Knowledge, American Philosophical Society – Tribal Community Science: Advancing the Understanding of Philosophical Tenets from Local Knowledge Production Processes.   

In August, results from the first geochemical analyses of samples collected from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft were published in three journals, including Nature Astronomy. Dr. Dominique Weis, Director of the Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research (PCIGR) and Killam Professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS) at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Marghaleray Amini, Research Associate and a Senior Lab Manager at PCIGR, and Vivian Lai (MSc), a Research Assistant at PCIGR, were among the international team of scientists who co-authored the study.

A scanning electron microscope image of a micrometeorite impact crater in a particle of material collected from asteroid Bennu. Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center

By studying Bennu’s elemental and isotopic makeup, the scientists traced its history back to a larger parent asteroid that broke apart after a collision, likely in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. That parent body formed over 4.5 billion years ago, during the birth of our solar system, from material with diverse origins—near the Sun, in the colder outer solar system, and even from other stars. “The variety of material that makes up Bennu is much greater than we could have imagined at the beginning,” said Dr. Weis. “There are even some pieces of Bennu that might predate the creation of our solar system. We have just a few grains, a few grams, that tell a very long history.”

Comparisons between Bennu, Ryugu (a similar asteroid sampled by the Japanese Hayabusa 2 mission), and Ivuna-type (CI) carbonaceous chondrite meteorites found on Earth suggest that their parent asteroids may have originated in the same region of the early solar system. However, Bennu stands out due to its higher levels of organic matter, anhydrous silicate minerals, and lighter isotopes of potassium and zinc. These differences suggest that the building blocks in that region either shifted over time or were not as evenly mixed as once thought. Remarkably, some of Bennu’s components appear to have survived heat, water, and even the violent collision that created the asteroid itself. “It's interesting on many levels because it reflects the original or older composition of the solar system, and it also allows us to understand how we arrived at the composition of the Earth that we have today,” said Dr. Weis.

Mass spectrometers at one of PCIGR’s analytical laboratories. Credit: D. Weis

PCIGR played a key role in these discoveries, analyzing the inorganic components of the Bennu samples for major and trace elements at extremely low concentrations. The team spent months optimizing sample handling methods and PCIGR’s highly sensitive, state-of-the-art mass spectrometers by analyzing reference meteorites of expected similar composition to Bennu. From the 121 grams of Bennu material that were returned to Earth in September 2023, Canada received 4% or almost 5 grams. PCIGR received enough material to carry out and repeat a series of analyses using the fine-tuned and thoroughly tested analytical protocols. The team carefully prepared and analyzed the elemental compositions of the Bennu samples, while ensuring they remained uncontaminated. 

“These analyses will help us to understand the origin and evolution not only of the parent body of this asteroid, but also of our entire solar system and other planetary bodies in time and space,” stated Dr. Amini. 

Another PCIGR-led publication on Bennu is in progress—stay tuned.

Read more:

• Listen to Dr. Weis’s interview on Radio Canada, in the show “Les années lumière”: Les analyses des échantillons de Bennu : Entrevue avec Dominique Weis
• Watch this video to learn about the research projects and facilities at PCIGR, including their work on Bennu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4J8F568ooc

• Check out Dr. Weis’s interview with UBC from the early stages of this exciting journey: Bits of Bennu asteroid to arrive at UBC