Dr. Greg Lawrence

Dr. Greg Lawrence has been a faculty member at UBC since 1987.  Focusing on the impact of the fluid mechanics of inland and coastal waters on water quality, chemistry and biology, Dr. Lawrence is investigating techniques to minimize the environmental impact of waste discharge; restoring and rehabilitating lakes and other water systems that have been polluted.  Dr. Lawrence was elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2011 and the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in 2012, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Camille Dagenais Award for his contributions to the development and practice of hydrotechnical engineering in Canada (2011), the BC Premier’s Award (2010), and the Journal of Environmental Engineering Editor’s Award (2001). Dr. Lawrence is also an instructor in the UBC Master of Engineering Leadership in Integrated Water Management.

Dr. Bernard Laval

Dr. Bernard Laval joined the Department of Civil Engineering in June 2002, and currently serves as the Department Head. Additionally, Dr. Laval served as the Associate Head for the Undergraduate Program from 2012-2015 and 2016-2017. His background in Engineering Physics (University of British Columbia) provides him with a very versatile technological base. He has a Masters in Physical Oceanography (McGill University) and a PhD in Environmental Engineering (University of Western Australia). From 1995-1998 Bernard worked as a research scientist developing Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (submersibles) for use as instrument platforms for the study of lakes and coastal waters. Dr. Laval has over 20 years of experience in applied fluid mechanics of inland and coastal waters and has authored several publications on field instrument and numerical model development, as well as description and theory of transport processes in lakes and estuaries.

Dr. Roger Pieters

Dr. Roger Pieters is a Research Associate in the department Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.  The focus of my research has been on physical limnology – the physics of lakes, reservoirs, and water filled mine-pits.  I have conducted field projects, and have participated in a variety of multidisciplinary studies involving researchers from a range of backgrounds.  Examples of recent projects include examining how thermal stratification isolates turbidity in a drinking water reservoir, how interflow short-circuits nutrients to the deep outlets of an hydroelectric reservoir, and how the exclusion of salt from the ice can induce meromixis (permanent stratification) in brackish pit-lakes.

Email: rpieters@eoas.ubc.ca

Dr. Ted Tedford

Dr. Ted Tedford started studying circulation and mixing in coastal and inland waters as a masters student in 1998. His focus and strength is in the combined use of spectral analysis, analytical theory, laboratory models and numerical models to interpret field observations. His long term goal is to better understand the impact of small scale processes particularly shear instabilities, internal waves, convection and surface waves on large scale circulation in lakes and estuaries.

Email: ttedford@eoas.ubc.ca

Dr. Jérémie Bonneau

I am a Postdoc supervised by Dr. Bernard Laval (UBC) and Dr. Derek Mueller (Carleton University). My research focuses on ice-ocean interactions in glacial fjords and ice shelf cavities. More specifically, I study how the ocean circulation is influenced by coastal ice structures (tidewater glaciers, ice shelves) and in return how the fate of these ice structures is linked to the ocean circulation. I combine in-situ oceanographic observations and three-dimensional numerical modeling to answer these questions. My main field site is Milne Fiord, on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, where I have the chance to visit each summer. More broadly, I am interested in environmental and geophysical fluid dynamics, the impact of climate change on the cryosphere, and interactions between ice and water.

Email: jeremie_bonneau@outlook.com

Sherif Alaa Ibrahim

I earned my Bachelor’s degree in 2019 and a Master of Science in Water Engineering and Environment in 2023, both from Cairo University. My master’s research focused on initiating environmental surveillance of Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria in a developing country and monitoring its fate after wastewater treatment. I also gained experience in groundwater aquifer modeling as part of a national project in Egypt, aimed at guiding sustainable water policies. Currently, I am pursuing a Ph.D. under Dr. Laval, investigating deep mixing and ventilation in Quesnel Lake, with a focus on how climate change may affect these processes. To achieve this, my primary focus is on evaluating the capability of general numerical lake models to accurately capture the physics of deep lakes. I am inspired by a desire to address pressing water challenges that affect both my country and the global context.

Email: sherif.ibrahim@ubc.ca

Brody Granger

In an early memory, Brody is watching waves while sitting in a little boat with his mother on Rose Lake, a small lake near his hometown of Williams Lake, BC. She tells him that some people dedicate their lives to understanding waves, which he finds shocking. He somehow managed to overcome his shock, grew up, and went to UBC to study engineering, where at the 2013 Civil Christmas Party he got chatting with Bernard Laval who offered Brody a summer job in his research group. Brody accepted, and the two shook hands. On the fourth of August of that following summer, in the region where Brody grew up, Mount Polley Mine spilled its guts into Quesnel Lake, a disaster which years later would become the subject of his M.A.Sc. thesis with Bernard. These days Brody lives abroad and spends more of his time engaged with waves of the musical variety, although he maintains ties to Quesnel Lake and the ongoing research into its astonishing internal waves.

Email: brody.k.granger@gmail.com

Sara Jamali

Sara earned her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2021, where her undergraduate research focused on investigating the effects of climate change on thermal stratification and water quality in lakes, with a case study of Lake Michigan. Currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Environmental Fluid Mechanics under the supervision of Dr. Lawrence. Sara’s research focuses on assessing the impact of salt exclusion during ice formation on spring turnover in a brackish pit lake using the General Lake Model (GLM).

Email: ssaraj@mail.ubc.ca

Amin Sadeghpour

I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Water Science and Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2022, where my undergraduate research focused on automating vertical height whirling weirs using artificial neural networks. Currently, I am pursuing a MASc in Hydrotechnical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Bernard Laval. My research explores wind-driven upwelling events in Quesnel Lake and understanding the mechanistic links between wind patterns and upwelling events in this complex, multi-armed lake.

Email: a.sadeghpour@ubc.ca

Talia Houston

Talia earned her Bachelor’s Degree in 2024 from the University of British Columbia. Her undergraduate research was centered on methane dynamics in two upland lakes in Kelowna. Talia is now a Master’s student working under the supervision of Dr. Gregory Lawrence. Her current research focuses on Base Mine Lake. Talia’s passion lies in exploring complex freshwater ecosystems and contributing to sustainable water resource management.

Email: thoust01@student.ubc.ca

Romane Bouchard

Romane is a Master’s student working under the supervision of Dr. Bernard Laval. Her research focuses on understanding the physical dynamics of Sx̱ótsaqel (Chilliwack Lake) under the impacts of Climate Change. She is particularly interested in how physics governs the microscopic scale of a system, and how understanding these dynamics can improve mitigation and conservation strategies in the face of climate change. Romane graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor’s Degree in the joint major of Physics and Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from McGill University.

Email: romaneb@mail.ubc.ca

Ana Erdevicki

I am a second-year Geological Engineering student at UBC, currently working as a Student Research Assistant alongside Ph.D. and master’s students. I contribute to the Quesnel Lake hydrodynamic modeling project by processing CTD data, interpreting wind-model outputs, and conducting sensitivity analyses using a 3D hydrodynamic model. My passion lies in Civil Engineering, with a particular interest in water and fluid mechanics.

ALUMNI

Lauren Ing (M.Sc., Graduation 2024)

Lauren completed her Master of Applied Science in November 2024 under the supervision of Dr. Greg Lawrence, working closely with Dr. Ted Tedford. Her research focused on quantifying methane ebullition flux at Base Mine Lake using bubble traps and analyzing its relationship to hydrostatic pressure (https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0445540). She previously earned a Bachelor’s of Engineering Science in Civil Engineering with an Environmental Specialization from the University of Western Ontario in 2022, where her undergraduate research explored improving geophysical methods for assessing stormwater infiltration at low-impact development sites. Lauren is currently based in Toronto, pursuing opportunities in the water resources engineering industry.

Dr Kelsey Everard (Ph.D., Graduation 2023)

Dr. Kelsey Everard completed her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Greg Lawrence and Dr. Marc Parlange in November 2023. She was also a member of the UBC Institute of Applied Mathematics. Her dissertation addressed three topical problems in natural convection: 1) how to interpret observational turbulence measurements in thermally driven flows, 2) how a strongly temperature dependent viscosity affects the dynamics of free convection, and 3) how exchange flows driven by differential cooling interacts with the non-linear equation of state to impact the timing of ice-onset in a lake. She now works as a postdoctoral research associate in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. Her current work involves using machine learning techniques to improve the parameterisation of mesoscale eddies in ocean models. She is broadly interested in environmental and geophysical fluid dynamics, with particular interest in dynamics involving density gradients under the influence of gravity and boundary-layer processes.

Email: kae10022@nyu.edu