McGill professor Andrew Hendry has been awarded a $1,650,000 grant, to be distributed over six years, from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) program. The CREATE program is designed to help graduates expand their professional and personal skills so they can make a successful transition from the classroom to the workplace. Students have the opportunity to enhance their ability to work productively in a research environment that has become increasingly multidisciplinary.
Prof. Hendry’s project, “Biodiversity, ecosystem services, and sustainability” (BESS), is aimed at addressing threats posed by environmental change to biodiversity, ecosystem services, and sustainability, particularly in tropical environments that are increasingly under pressure from natural resource extraction. The project will train environmental scientists in environmental monitoring, biodiversity surveying, and ecological impact assessments, and will impart the skills to develop mitigation strategies and design restoration projects.
“We would like to thank the NSERC CREATE program for their support of this research,” said Rosie Goldstein, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) at McGill. “This project will enhance our knowledge of the role biodiversity plays in supporting the various services provided by ecosystems, and it will assist McGill’s graduate trainees in the environmental sciences to gain research-related professional skills.”