I started working at NAIT's Center for Oil Sands Sustainability in June, 2019. Under the leadership of Dr. Heather Kaminsky, our team is focused on helping our industrial clients explore and improve various facets of oil sands tailings waste management.Since joining my team, I have been the project manager for a number of research projects. Although the projects are different and nuanced, they all fall under a central theme of using natural processes to remediate oil sands tailings.I am very fortunate that my work at COSS is incredibly varied. I prepare proposals, manage budgets, give presentations to clients, design experiments, analyze data and write reports. When I've been sitting for too long, I go to our beautiful lab space in the Productivity and Innovation Center on NAIT's main campus to troubleshoot equipment and provide technical assistance. My days at NAIT are never boring, that's for sure!

I graduated from the M.Sc. program at the University of Alberta in October 2018. During my time as a student, I had the privilege of being a member the Pipeline Transport Processes research group under the mentorship and supervision of Dr. Sean Sanders. My research focused on the areas of non-Newtonian fluid transport, shear induced degradation of thickened oil sand tailings slurries, and the effects of energy addition to flocculated clay particles.Waste stream management poses a major headache for oil sands and mineral processing companies. Storage basins, known as tailings ponds, serve as a collection facility for sand, clay particles, dirty process water, and residual bitumen. Immense effort, time, and money is invested into dewatering tailings ponds as much as possible, with the goals of reclaiming water and usable land, and reducing the volume of hazardous waste materials. Unfortunately, due to a number of reasons, thickened tailings are often rendered off-spec during their commute through transport pipelines. My research investigates this phenomena and builds a better picture of what happens to thickened clay slurry during pipeline transport.I have also been the teaching assistant for the third year undergraduate chemical engineering fluid mechanics course for three consecutive years, winning two teaching awards in 2017. I have great passion for educating and mentoring my students, and I consider myself the personal tutor for over 550 future engineers.