MEOPAR recognizes the importance of supporting early career investigators to maximize their considerable potential.
Early Career Faculty (ECF)
MEOPAR Early Career Faculty Award
During both of its funding cycles, MEOPAR offered the Early Career Faculty (ECF) Grants. These grants were a unique opportunity for early career faculty investigators to contribute to and participate in MEOPAR’s broad interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research effort, thereby growing and extending their network of collaborators and interactions with stakeholders. The Call was specifically targeted at early career investigators who received their first faculty appointment in the last five years. A total of 29 ECF across Canada were funded as part of this program.
Cycle I – MEOPAR ECF Awards
- Natalie Ban (University of Victoria): Enhancing Ecosystem Resilience: Integrating Social and Natural Sciences through Marine Historical Ecology
- Rachel Chang (Dalhousie University): Understanding the factors that affect the properties of coastal and polar fog
- Jérôme Dupras (Université du Québec en Outaouais): Modélisation socio-écologique de l’environnement sonore lors des interactions navigation baleine dans l’estuaire du fleuve Saint-Laurent
- Brent Else (University of Calgary): A Meteorological Observatory in the Northwest Passage: Understanding Sea Ice Changes and Inuit use of Scientific Information
- Brett Favaro (Memorial University, now Simon Fraser University): It’s Too Easy Being Green: Using Underwater Video to Optimize Capture Efficiency of Invasive Green Crab (Carcinus maenas) to Reduce their Impact on Fisheries
- Daniel Kirhbaum (McGill University): Evaluation, Improvement, and Communication of Short-Term Hazardous-weather Forecasts over Coastal British Columbia
- Martin Krkosek (University of Toronto): Modeling and Predicting Disease Outbreak and Spread in Coastal Seas: Towards Sustainability in Fisheries and Aquaculture
- Philip Loring (University of Saskatchewan, now University of Guelph): Linking Ocean Health and Human Health: Coastal Security and Sustainability in Haida Gwaii
- Haibo Niu (Dalhousie University): Improving Oil Spill Models to Support Environmental Emergency Response and Chemical Dispersant use Policy Development
- Rocky Taylor (Memorial University): Pressured Ice: Environmental Monitoring, Modeling and Mitigation of Risk for Marine Operations
- Jason Thistlethwaite (University of Waterloo): Insuring Canadian Coastal Communities in the Era of Wild Weather
- Aldona Wiacek (Saint Mary’s University): Continuous spectroscopic measurements of marine boundary layer composition and evolution in an urban shipping environment
Cycle II – MEOPAR ECF Awards
- Christopher Algar (Dalhousie University): Predicting and mitigating sulfide accumulation in aquaculture impacted coastal sediments
- Kimberley Davies (University of New Brunswick): Impacts of climate-driven ocean prey shortage on endangered whales and their coexistence with humans
- Kyle Elliott (McGill University): URIAS: Understanding and pRedicting the effects of Increased shipping on Arctic Seabirds
- Maxime Geoffroy (Memorial University): FISH DIP: Dam Impacts on Pelagic Fish Ecology in a Subarctic Estuary (Lake Melville, Labrador)
- Amanda Giang (University of British Columbia): Air quality co-benefits of decarbonizing maritime shipping for coastal communities
- Floris Goerlandt (Dalhousie University): Shipping Accident Oil Spill Consequences and Response Effectiveness in Arctic Marine Environments (iSCREAM)
- Peter Kikkert (St. Francis Xavier University): Horizontal Capacity-Mapping to Support Capability-Based Planning and Capacity-Building for Community-Based Maritime and Coastal Search and Rescue and Emergency Response in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut
- Barret Kurylyk (Dalhousie University): Vulnerability of Small-Island Freshwater Resources to Climate Change
- Eva Kwoll (University of Victoria): Towards responsible development of BC’s northern waters: observation and modelling of sediment- and hydro-dynamics in the Skeena Estuary
- Arnault LeBris (Memorial University): Monitoring juvenile American Lobster (Homarus americanus) to forecast productivity in the growing Newfoundland lobster fishery
- Mélanie Lemire (Université Laval): Co-developing innovative approaches with Indigenous partners to foster coastal resilience, food security and sustainable marine harvests while enhancing community capacity to proactively respond to marine risks
- Fanny Noisette (Université du Québec à Rimouski): Predicting the future of seagrass meadows along the Eastern coast of Canada: an innovative functional approach in the context of global change
- Eric Oliver (Dalhousie University): Drivers, predictability and fisheries impacts of ocean temperature extremes
- Katleen Robert (Memorial University): Holyrood Sub-Arctic Coastal Observatory
- Vincent Sieben (Dalhousie University): Globally transforming the ocean biogeochemical domain using lab-on-chip technology
- Stephanie Waterman (University of British Columbia): Predicting Physical and Biogeochemical Properties on the BC Central Coast
- Qi Zhou (University of Calgary): A physical oceanographic prediction framework for Cambridge Bay, Nunavut
Early Career Faculty Training and Support Program
In 2020, MEOPAR started to offer a training and support program specifically designed for ECF. Not only the program offers a community for the ECF across the country, it also delivers professional development sessions that addresses ECF needs and challenges. So far, the program offered informal virtual coffee meet-up, online training sessions and discussion sessions (virtual) between ECF and mid-career and senior faculty. The goal of each of these sessions is to offer a safe space for ECF to learn and exchange with peers about their experience and challenges.
The sessions held over the last few years were an important source of information and advice shared with and by the attendees. Hence, a document was produced to capture the different perspectives and experiences shared during those sessions. The document is available and can can be downloaded by all.
The professional development webinar series are also available to all below.
Budgeting Basics
The training series, lead by Robyn Roscoe (B.Sc., PMP; Lyric Management), covers research project budget development and goes into detail on expense categorization and some templates to get started in preparing a project budget. Also covered are cost management elements such as expense control and reporting, as well as key considerations in research project finance.
- Part 1 – Cost Proposal Development (60 min): This presentation looks at elements of cost proposal development for a research project, including principles of cost management, expense categories, and budget structure.
- Part 2 – Project Cost Management (60 min): This session covers research project cost management, focusing on sound financial management for Canadian grant funded research projects. Topics include project launch and set-up, monitoring, and reporting.
- Part 3 – Key Considerations in Project Cost Management (60 min): This final session in the series looks at key considerations for budget and cost management in research, with a look at common funding mechanisms, matching funding, and post-award considerations.
Project Team Management Series
This is training series, lead by Robyn Roscoe (B.Sc., PMP; Lyric Management), is oriented specifically towards Postdoctoral Fellows and Early Career Faculty members and covers two major themes: project team leadership and management skills. The series is composed of the following courses:
- Team Leadership Essentials (90 min): This workshop covers project team development and people management. For new leaders or those looking adopt more leadership approaches in their work with others, topics include team building and development, team decision-making, and conflict resolution.
- Effective Communication (60 min): This session covers the three essential characteristics of communication. Learn about establishing a key message, listening and questioning techniques to improve understanding, and important tools for being heard and understood.
- Effective Delegation (60 min): Effective delegation is an important skill that enables balancing of workloads and can create development opportunities for personnel. Topics include the basics of delegation and some tools and techniques for making delegation more effective for the participants, organization, and projects.
- Effective Relationship Building (60 min): In this webinar, we will look at essential elements to build and sustain effective relationships to improve and enhance our work and projects. We will consider the characteristics of effective relationships, how to build them, how to break them, how to repair them, and how to sustain them.