Vanier Award

In 2014, I was awarded the Vanier Scholarship and was also a recipient of the Gilles Brassard Doctoral Prize for Interdisciplinary Research. The award ceremony for this was held in Ottawa and I got to meet the Governor General of Canada! I put a solid month of effort into writing the application for the Vanier Scholarship - with the help of many friends. Below is my Leadership Self-Assessment, which was one of the main parts of the application.

Leadership Self-Assessment¶

Passion for community involvement, environmental stewardship and Canada’s natural spaces¶

While living in Calgary, I was an active steward of a local natural park, and was involved in public outreach regarding invasive species that were taking over the native prairie ecosystem (two National Awards, 2006). In 2007, I worked for the nonprofit Alberta Wilderness Association, where I observed environmental leaders as they encouraged community awareness and participation through events and political action. My interpretation of leadership stems not only from observations of exemplary community leaders, but also my family. As a family we were recognized in 2010 with a Volunteer Calgary Award for our outstanding contributions to the city.

Engaging, mentoring and collaborating with colleagues to foster an open research community¶

During my graduate education, I have been developing geophysical research software. At first, the drive to create this software was specific to my own research. However, as I gained experience, I envisioned the potential benefits that a generalized software package could bring to my research community. I shared this vision with Dr. Haber and we initiated an open source software project. This nascent project quickly surpassed my original research code in terms of usability and generality. I currently organize and lead developer meetings, and I am heavily involved in architecting the software for robust use in many applications. To this end, I have the opportunity to collaboratively envision and implement solutions with many researchers in a goal oriented, one-on-one environment. Not only is this a powerful learning and teaching experience for myself, but the dynamic of communication in our group is becoming more open, encouraging engagement in each other’s research.

Leading the geoscience education community through innovative engagement tools¶

I started creating geoscience visualization software as an undergraduate when I saw many of my peers struggling with three dimensional intuition. After sharing my initial visualizations with my peers, it was clear that I had stumbled upon an extremely effective teaching method. I pitched my vision to Dr. Reid, the introductory geology instructor, and she hired me as a software consultant that summer, a job that I balanced with a competitive student research assistantship. The developed tools were integrated into the introductory geology course, and received positive student and instructor feedback. Unsatisfied with the scope of the project after I graduated, I dedicated a full year of my own time (interspersed with some volunteering in the Amazon rainforest, studying Spanish, and helping to build an elementary school in Cusco, Peru) to bring these visualizations and modelling products to the web. To pivot to an online environment, I taught myself five new programming languages and countless software packages through research, networking, and sheer persistence. Since going live in October 2011, over 90,000 people from all over the world have created geologic models using my tools, I have won international recognition, and I have engaged approximately 2000 geoscience educators. After being approached by a major textbook publisher, I founded a company, 3point Science, with two colleagues at Stanford University involved in user-centric design and public outreach. As the technical lead at 3point Science, I work closely with our programming staff, and am involved in visioning, planning, and leading negotiations. We have big plans to change worldwide geoscience education, and believe that science education has the potential to engage, inspire and improve our society.

My family has taught me much about community involvement and leading through engaging people to create meaningful change. My experiences have taught me that leadership is not about the positions of power or authority that you hold, but how you inspire and connect those around you. I have the privilege of being surrounded by extremely bright and enthusiastic individuals. Our collaborations are fostering relationships that will outlive our graduate programs. I strive to engage and inspire my peers, and I deeply believe that these connections are key to creating the movements that will improve our research, our field, and our world.