Congratulations to Nahyan Rana – PhD student Nahyan Rana (working under the supervision of Professor Steve Evans in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences) has been awarded the 2022 Gary Salmon Memorial Scholarship of the Canadian Dam Association (CDA). The citation reads ‘in recognition of your academic excellence, quality research advancements in dam safety and the management of dams, and community leadership”. Nahyan’s PhD research involves the analysis of tailings dam failures and has so far led to the publication of two major papers in leading international journals (see Nahyan’s Google Scholar profile at https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=5SBlZOEAAAAJ&hl=en). The award was valued at $5,000 and included travel to the CDA Annual Meeting in St. John’s, NL where Nahyan was presented with the award on October 18.
Nahyan is the first PhD student from the University of Waterloo (and only the second from the province of Ontario) to have received this scholarship that was first awarded in 2009. He is a leading researcher in the CanBreach project, an NSERC-funded collaboration between 3 universities (University of Waterloo, The University of British Columbia, and Queen's University) supported by NSERC and five industrial partners (Klohn Crippen Berger, BGC Engineering, Golder Associates, Imperial Oil, and Suncor Energy) to study tailings dam failures worldwide.
The CDA award is further recognition of the Department’s leading expertise in sustainable resource development in Canada and overseas.