News

Dr. Shandin Pete, Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, is investigating connections between natural phenomena and Indigenous scientific knowledge. 

Check out the recent episode of the CBC radio show The Early Edition where Dr. Pete talked about Indigenous hydrology and astronomy. 

To learn more about what scientific clues Dr. Pete found Indigenous stories reveal, check out the article by UBC News: Indigenous stories reveal the science of the world around us.

Dr. Pete is a hydrogeologist and science educator with interest in Indigenous research methodologies, geoscientific ethnography, Indigenous astronomy, social-political tribal structures, culturally congruent instructional strategies, and indigenous science philosophies. Most of his work in recent years has focused on community engagement to understanding shifts in an Indigenous paradigm of research for science knowledge production. This work has included extensive collaboration with tribal knowledge holders across Native communities and Indigenous academic scholars at institutions nationally and internationally.

Dr. Curtis Suttle (FRSC, Distinguished University Scholar) is a professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Suttle was recently interviewed in the CBC radio show North by Northwest and discussed his research on how viruses are essential to our existence. 

Research in the Suttle laboratory is primarily focused on viruses and their role in the environment. The work ranges from the characterization of viruses isolated from the environment to quantifying the role of viruses in microbial mortality and nutrient cycling. The techniques employed range from nucleic-acid sequencing to oceanographic sampling. Some current projects are examining viruses and their roles in the oceans, high Arctic, deep mines, aeolian dust, lakes and migratory-bird ponds.

Check out the podcast here: https://muckrack.com/podcast/north-by-northwest-from-cbc-radio-british-…

Imagine that a weather forecast model could see the weather in the atmosphere like radar! Anthony Di Stefano, PhD student in Atmospheric Sciences at EOAS, introduces his AGU21 presentation on evaluation of weather research and forecasting microphysics schemes using polarimetric radar data.

Garry Clarke received his doctorate in physics in 1967 from the University of Toronto and is currently Emeritus Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. His research speciality is glaciology and his particular expertise is in subglacial physical processes, subglacial hydrology, the stability of glaciers and ice sheets, and cryospheric agents of abrupt climate change. He spearheaded a 35-year glaciological field study in Yukon, Canada, that involved drilling and extensive use of subglacial instrumentation and he remains active in the development of theory and computational models of glacier and ice sheet dynamics. Clarke has served as President of the International Glaciological Society and the Canadian Geophysical Union and received the highest scientific awards of both these organizations. He was a lead author of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a contributing author to the Fourth Assessment. Clarke is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Geophysical Union, and the Arctic Institute of North America.

The Pacific Museum of Earth (PME) is hosting a family reunion millions of years in the making in their new exhibit: the Hominin Hall. The PME’s Hominin Hall explores the story of human evolution, starting our narrative 7 million years ago in Chad with Sahelanthropus tchadensis and concluding with our own species –Homo sapiens– and our uncertain future on our fragile planet. In this exhibit, visitors will delve into the lives of ten different hominins and explore how some characteristics and ways of life, from bipedalism to omnivory, came to define our lineage and continue in our own lives.

The replica skulls used in this exhibit were purchased in 2019 with a UBC Academic Equipment Fund for use in several EOAS courses and for display in the PME with the goal of showing the relative blink of an eye that humans have played in the long stretch of deep geologic time, by placing human evolution in a temporal context in the overall arc of the evolution of the biosphere. As visitors walk through this gallery, they will be confronted with the daily flow of UBC students walking up and down Main Mall, whose motion amplifies the dynamic story of human history we aim to tell and illustrates our condition as the last hominins of what was once a much larger family tree. In addition, the Hominin Hall’s placement in the front hallway of the Earth Sciences Building will provide a “zoomed-in” version of the last 7 million years of the Walk Through Time, an upcoming exhibit soon to be visible just outside the gallery windows.

Christian earned his MPhys in Physics in 1998, his DPhil in Mathematics, 2002, and did a post-doctoral degree at UBC from 2002-2007. He’s been a teaching faculty member of UBC in glaciology since 2007. He specializes in understanding the physics of how a glacier moves, and is passionate about the outdoors.