Aurora

Employment & Opportunities

Postdoctoral Fellow: Secular evolution of sulfur cycling during orogenesis through time - Université Laval

This project seeks to understand the secular evolution through time of sulfur cycling at craton margins by tracing supracrustal multiple sulfur isotope signatures to tectono-magmatically characterised plutonic suites. We have ongoing boots-on-the-ground projects in various orogens within and bordering on the Superior craton including the Archean Pontiac subprovince and Baie James regions of the Superior Craton, the Paleoproterozoic Ungava Orogen and Southeast Churchill, and the Mesoproterozoic Grenville Orogen. This project will necessitate fieldwork in some of the above locations to collect suites of samples, and data compilation and selection of historic samples in others. Lab work will include running our in-house acid reduction sulfur extraction line to prepare samples for multiple sulfur isotopes analyses. These analyses will be completed at IPGP Paris by fluorination line – IRMS. The candidate will also be able to utilize our LA-ICPMS-(QQQ) for which we have developed δ34S analyses.

More details can be found here.

Research scientist position (term) in data assimilation - Environment and Climate Change Canada

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is seeking a skilled research scientist (SE-RES-02  to SE-RES-05: 74 914 $ to 155 950 $) to conduct cutting-edge research in atmospheric data assimilation. This work will support advances in the field of numerical weather predictions, and the duties include improving data assimilation techniques, observation impact assessment and quality control methods.

The Incumbent would be working in the multi-disciplinary team of data assimilation and satellite meteorology within the Meteorological Research Division of ECCC, based at the Canadian Meteorological Center in Dorval. Amongst other things, this team is well known for its pioneering work on ensemble-based (e.g. EnKF, LETKF) and variational (e.g. 4DEnVar) data assimilation methods.

More details can be found here.

Summer Field Assistants and Permanent Positions - BC Geological Survey

The BC Geological Survey is hiring Summer Field Assistants and is also looking to fill several Permanent Positions

Summer Field Assistants: We are looking for undergraduate geology students, graduate students or recent graduates that would be interested in Junior or Senior Field Assistant positions for the upcoming summer field season with the BC Geological Survey. Cover letters and resumes can be sent to Geological.Survey@gov.bc.ca.

Permanent positions: We are hiring a Minerals Geologist and Senior Minerals Geologist (applications close early February). These are fantastic opportunities for folks with a graduate degree, P.Geo., and ~4+ years of work experience.

More details can be found here.

News & Events

IOF SEMINAR - Fear and food drive blue whale migration, singing, mating, and calving behavior

Blue whales are truly enormous yet remain enigmatic and poorly understood, with most populations only studied for a few summer months every year, and mating and calving never observed. As a result, classical theories for their migration and behavior have relied heavily on analogies with better-studied species like humpback whales: proposing that they feed in productive high-latitude areas in summer, and fast while migrating to and from low-latitude breeding and calving areas. However, blue whales react quite differently to marauding killer whales: unlike humpback, gray and right whales which “fight” back; blue, fin, and sei whales are “flight” species that flee from killer whales as fast as possible. Under this fight vs. flight paradigm, it makes no sense for blue whales to migrate along well-defined paths to mate and calve in dense coastal aggregations. Blue whale diet preference is also fanatically narrow instead of being broad like other baleen whale species: each blue whale population targets only one to three species of krill throughout their range, and far from fasting in winter, they feed wherever and whenever it is convenient—just like hobbits. In preparation for writing a book on blue whales, Dr. Branch has delved deeply into past and present science about blue whales, including old whaling data, and new non-lethal science using drones, hydrophones, tags, and genetics. This deep dive has resulted in a series of hypotheses to explain long-standing mysteries about blue whales, including why they are found in some areas and not others; where they go in winter; why they sing so loudly; when they sing most; when they calve; and why so few calves are ever observed. Remarkably, these broader hypotheses for their behavior can all be derived from the underlying axioms of fear and food.

Please RSVP here.