Cameron Naficy receives Mitacs Elevate Grant
/By Sonya Odsen
Cameron was finishing up a report and shifting to some analysis to help inform this summer’s data collection plan when he got the news. His hard work put into the highly competitive application process had paid off—Cameron had been awarded a Mitacs Elevate grant!
This grant provides Cameron with a salary, guaranteeing him a third year in his postdoctoral position and freeing up significant resources for other aspects of his team’s work. These resources can instead be put to use processing dendroecological (tree ring) samples and aerial photo analysis—the slowest steps in the data analysis process. These extra resources will help speed along both Cameron’s work and some of the Modeling Team’s work, too.
This funding opens the door for the Fire Regime Team to conduct a new analysis using some high-resolution, older images that Cameron recently located. This should allow the team to conduct very detailed and robust analysis of burn severity patterns from historical fires.
Cameron was previously funded by a Mitacs Accelerate grant, a one-year grant that he was wrapping up when he got the good news. The Mitacs Elevate award is a great accomplishment that provides more stability by funding Cameron for two years. The grant program also sets him up for success during and after his post-doctoral position through professional development programs.
Congratulations to Cameron, and a sincere thank-you to Mitacs for supporting Cameron’s important work to better understand the historical role fire has played in shaping the landscapes of southwestern Alberta. You can learn more about the Mitacs Elevate program here.
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Sonya Odsen is an Ecologist and Science Communicator with a background in boreal ecology and conservation. She is a regular writer for Landscapes in Motion and is part of the Outreach and Engagement Team for the project.
Every member of our team sees the world a little bit differently, which is one of the strengths of this project. Each blog posted to the Landscapes in Motion website represents the personal experiences, perspectives, and opinions of the author(s) and not of the team, project, or Healthy Landscapes Program.
