Sustainability Scholarship
THE CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR IS OPEN for 2025. The deadline is February 10, 2025.
MetSoc’s Sustainability Section is passionately committed to creating a more sustainable global metallurgical and materials industry. The scholarship aims to encourage graduate studies in technical and environmental areas in the metallurgical and materials industry (i.e., research focused on the development of environmental practices and standards).
2024 Recipient
Alireza Gholami
Queen's University
Alireza is pursuing his PhD at the Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining at Queen’s University. With experience in gold processing, bio-treatment, and the modeling and simulation of mineral processing systems, he has actively contributed to numerous mineral processing projects, leading to multiple publications in esteemed journals that highlight his robust research capabilities. He is dedicated to advancing sustainable practices and is a member of the GreeMVC Lab at Queen’s University, under the supervision of Dr. Qian Zhang. His research focuses on evaluating the full life-cycle impact of upcycling and valorizing dolomite to extract magnesium using hydrometallurgical methods. He utilizes life cycle assessment and metallurgical modeling and simulation tools, complemented by lab experiments, to achieve this goal. Aside from his academic pursuits, Alireza is interested in electronics, robotics, and programming, aiming to develop innovative tools to improve the accuracy and analysis of mineral processing tests. An example of his work is Floplus, a software for fast and reliable evaluation of mineral flotation kinetics. In addition to the MetSoc 2024 Sustainability Scholarship Award, Alireza has received other prestigious awards, including the Gordon Bell Fellowship in Transformative Mining (2023 and 2024) from the Department of Mining, and the Paul Semple Memorial Fellowship (2023) from Queen’s University.
Scholarship Terms
The value of the scholarship is a single payment of $5,000 CAD. The amount of the award is reviewed annually by the Sustainability Section of MetSoc. No single individual should hold more than one scholarship award within MetSoc including its Technical sections in a given year. One award shall be made each year. However, the Award Committee may decide not to make an award if a suitable recipient is not identified.
Eligibility
To be eligible the candidate should be registered in a Master’s or Ph.D. program during the entire 2022/2023 academic year in a Canadian university.
Recipient’s Obligation
The award shall be presented at the Conference of Metallurgists. At that time, the recipient may be requested to speak on a subject of major interest to them in the field of metallurgy.
We encourage student recipients to apply for student travel funding (if travel is more than 500km) through the MetSoc Student program to help subsidize travel costs. The Sustainability section may grant the student recipients a complimentary ticket for the award banquet.
Applications must include:
1) A copy of the applicant’s academic transcripts
2) A summary of the project, including preliminary results, a discussion concerning subsequent project orientation, and a list of prepared publications or conference presentations (2-3 pages maximum)
- Impact of research on the sustainability of the metallurgical and materials industry
- Superior academic ability
- Creative and original thinking
- Involvement in school or industry activities
