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Geotechnical News • June 2018
CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
Do you feel an obligation to men-
tor female students?
No. I don’t favour women to men. I
probably draw more female students
because I am a woman. I don’t go out
to recruit them. I have a reputation
for being approachable. When other
students have problems with their
professors, they come to me for help.
I do what I can. I wish I could take on
more students. I had a large group at
one point, around fifteen or sixteen the
year before last. I’m trying to reduce
that a little bit.
Can you talk about the circum-
stances leading to the founding of
CIWESS?
When I first started going to Japan,
I noticed they had a school of global
environment at Kyoto University.
Seeing that got me thinking, “Maybe
this is something that we can do.”
Before I left to go on my sabbatical,
some colleagues and I were discuss-
ing forming something like this. We
had one person from arts and science,
one from fine arts, and one from the
John Molson School of Business. We
formed this core group. We had a com-
mon mindset that this was something
important. We talked to our provost.
At the time, sustainability wasn’t
really flying around as much as it is
now. I came back from my sabbati-
cal and the group was not really that
active. We put it on hold.
Then this program from NSERC came
along, CREATE. The whole vision for
the program was to be able to train in
a new way. I said, “Maybe we can do
it from an engineering point of view.
Try to train engineers with social and
economic perspectives.” This to me
was something that needed to be done.
Engineers are really, really good at the
technical side of their job, but they are
not always good at talking to people
and getting their projects going. From
my point of view, engineers don’t
always think about the social and
economic aspects of their work. You
need to be able to communicate and
to sell what you’re doing. I devised
this program so that they would have
internships to get some experience. At
the graduate level, this wasn’t some-
thing that was done. It was something
that I had actually implemented when
I was associate dean. I had established
a course where students could take an
internship. A lot of our students are
international so they have no Canadian
experience. I also wanted to be able
to keep some of our good students.
They finish their bachelor’s degree
and they don’t stay for their master’s.
They want to get experience, to make
money. I thought maybe this would be
a way to keep them.
What qualities does an innovator
need?
You need to be able to think outside
the box, think a little bit differently,
and more than tweaking things here
and there, which is the most com-
mon way that people do research. You
think, “Okay, there is this but maybe
we can make it a little bit better.”
That’s the most common form. You
have to be able to break the mold and
try to think in a totally different direc-
tion.
How do you view yourself as an
innovator?
I would call myself a problem solver.
I’m very tenacious. I don’t let things
go. I say, “This is going to happen one
way or another.” To overcome dif-
ferent things, you really have to have
that.
Where have you been most innova-
tive in your work?
The work that I’ve done with bio-
logical surfactants was innovative,
especially the work I did when I first
started, using biological surfactants
to look at all the different types of
positively charged metals. I was at
the forefront. I think that is a good
example of opening up this avenue. It
created a whole field. When I started,
you could count the number of people
working on biological surfactants.
It’s popularized a lot since then. My
research has certainly had an impact.
It has created a foundation for neces-
sary knowledge that has helped create
companies that are producing these
things. That’s amazing. Now we are
starting to do other things, like look-
ing at negatively-charged metals.
The last few years, my students and
I have been looking at arsenic. It is
negatively charged. Chromium has a
negative charge. We’ve gotten some
tailings samples from mines in Yel-
lowknife. We’re looking at the use of
surfactants for arsenic from two fronts.
One, can you look at it for stabiliz-
ing? And two, can you look at it for
extracting?
Can you think of someone who
is particularly innovative that has
inspired you?
My old supervisor. He had many
patents. He was a very active scientist.
He had multiple degrees so he was
able to look at things from different
points of view. He was at the forefront
of the field of geoenvironmental engi-
neering. The whole idea of contami-
nant transport I attribute to him.
What advice would you give to
young people considering pursuing
a career in engineering?
I think a lot of them probably have
the mindset that engineering is very
technical. In reality, it is not. There
are many other skills that people
can bring and there are many other
things that are involved in working in
engineering. People think you’re just
going to sit in your lab or your office
drawing and whatnot, but it’s not that.
You have to sell your ideas. You have
to talk to a lot of people. You have to
work with different communities. You
have to talk to different stakeholders.
I deal with a lot of students, graduate
students in particular. What I try to
get across to them is this. Go for it.
Work hard. Be strong. You’ve got to
focus. Do what you have to do to get
that project done. There are a lot of
life challenges along the way, but you
have to keep at it. One of my Ph.D.
students just had a baby. It is hard.
I told her, “Things will get better.”
