NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards
Value of award
The NSERC USRA has a base value of $6,000. In addition, faculty supervisors are required to supplement the award amount to meet BC minimum wage by using other sources such as university funds, NSERC grants, or any other research funds. The minimum pay for the tenure of your award is based on the June 1, 2025 BC minimum wage increase from $17.40/hr to $17.85/hr. The duration of the award is 14-16 weeks.
Are you eligible?
To be eligible for an award, you must:
- have completed all course requirements of at least the first year of university study with a cumulative average of at least 76% (B+ at UBC) on all courses taken,
- be registered as a full-time student, according to the UBC Vancouver definition (registered in 3 courses/9 credits) at the time of application,
- be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada, as of the deadline date for applications at the university
During the course of your undergraduate degree, you may hold a maximum of three NSERC USRAs, with only one being held per fiscal year (April 1 – March 31).
Deadlines and procedures
You can apply to work with any tenured or tenure-track Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science faculty member. Supervisors are no longer required to hold an eligible and active NSERC grant. However, they must be authorized, by the institution, to be able to independently supervise students.
Prior to applying for the NSERC-USRA, all students must complete the TCPS Research Ethics course. Submit a copy of your certificate of completion to fosawards.ubco@ubc.ca.
The deadline for applications is Wednesday, January 31, 2025.
Recent NSERC USRA Recipients
| Name | Department | Project Title | Supervisor |
| Janaeya Baher | Biology | Assessing whole cigarette smoke exposure effects on 3D alveolar tissue models via a 3D-printed exposure system | Emmanuel Osei |
| Mitchell Beckedorf | Biology | Decoding matrikines: Hidden signals in the body’s framework impact brain health | Andis Klegeris |
| Kim Davarani | Biology | Characterization of ADAM17 Activation Mechanisms | Philip Barker |
| Emmanuella Esebor | Chemistry | Cleaning our Water: Making a More Effective Arsenic Binder | Robert Godin |
| Daniel Krasnov | Biology | Fuzzy Clustering for Mixed-type Data | John Thompson |
| Ainsley Light | Biology | Genetic transformation of Grosso lavender (Lavandula x intermedia) | Soheil Mahmoud |
| Erika Lin | Biology | Mapping migratory corridors from animal tracking data | Michael Noonan |
| Ainsley Lirondelle | EEGS | WHAT THE FIRE!? can you do with a federal research award: A summer spent studying wildfires | Mathieu Bourbonnais |
| Keiran Malott | CMPS | Estimating spatial mixture models in the presence of missing data | Jeffrey Andrews |
| Rekha Marcus | Biology | The impacts of logging on primary productivity in caribou habitat in British Columbia | Michael Noonan |
| Kiera McAnerney | Chemistry | Single-molecule assay to characterize transcription factor DNA binding kinetics | Isaac Li |
| Tolu Akinwande | CMPS | Healthy Eats – Navigating Nutritional Wellness in a Foreign Country (Software Development) | Ifeoma Adaji |
| Annika Sanderson | Chemistry | How Hydrastine is Made: The Biological Production Line | Thuy Dang |
| Rhys Smith | CMPS | Using an On-body Space to Improve Scrolling in AR | Khalad Hasan |
| Ananda Thomlinson | CMPS | A Telescope Trio for Interstellar Observations | Alex Hill |
| Megan Turluk | Biology | Mucous Barrier Fix-Off: The Use of Zinc Fixative in Gut Mucous Research | Kirk Bergstrom |
| Samantha Yudin | Biology | Effects of Succinate on Microglial Activation and Neurotoxicity | Andis Klegeris |
| Name | Department | Project Title | Supervisor |
| Seth Akins | CMPS | An Embedded Sensor Database for Environmental and Agriculture Applications | Ramon Lawrence |
| Mitchell Beckedorf | Chemistry | Homogeneous photocatalysts for the valorization of insoluble waste biomass | Robert Godin |
| Olivia Boven | Biology | Genetic assessment of kokanee-sockeye salmon hybridization | Michael Russello |
| Olivia Carlson | Chemistry | Hormonomics: Mass Spectrometry tools to Understand Plant Growth | Susan Murch |
| Tia Der | CMPS | Shape-constrained data sharpening for change-point estimation | John Thompson |
| Alex Heffernan | Biology | Community dynamics of woodpeckers after wildfire | Karen Hodges |
| Talia Houston | EEGS | Identifying source water in BC interior wetlands using natural geochemical tracers | Edward Hornibrook |
| Ainsley Lirondelle | EEGS | Wildfire risk monitoring and cultural fire | Mathieu Bourbonnais |
| George Morgan | CMPS | Faraday synthesis in the DVA2 northern sky survey | Alex Hill |
| Shiv Patel | CMPS | Determining the Optimal Text Input Modality During Autonomous Driving | Pourang Irani |
| Ryan Riopel | Chemistry | Optimization of molecular beacon for super-resolution tension imaging | Isaac Li |
| Jill Shillito | Biology | Role of exogenous ovarian sex hormones on appetite and dietary intake in premenopausal females | Sarah Purcell |
| Justin Schoenit | CMPS | Field Evaluation of Wireless Sensor Systems for Agriculture | Ramon Lawrence |
| Megan Schroeder | Chemistry | Synthesis of an imaging probe for Cav channels | Frederic Menard |
| Amelia Mae Walker | Chemistry | Boron-based catalysts for sustainable chemistry | Conor Pranckevicius |
| Name | Department | Project Title | Supervisor |
| Olivia Boven | Biology | Sex Ratios of American Pika (Ochotona princeps) in Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park | Michael Russello |
| Olivia Ireland | Biology | Investigating the role of ProBDNF on phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate levels and caspase-3 cleavage in cortical neurons and PC12 cells | Julien Gibon |
| Clara Letef | Biology | Investigating factors controlling the impact of oxidized linoleic acid metabolites in cardiac fibroblasts | Sanjoy Ghosh |
| Alyssa McElhinney | Biology | Molecular mechanisms regulating astrocyte phagocytic activity | Andis Klegeris |
| Madeleine Agostino | Chemistry | Multifunctional borylenes for catalytic reactions | Conor Pranckevicius |
| Liam Bystrom | Chemistry | Investigating the Novel Complex Formation of B12-dependent Enzyme 5,6-LAM and Proposed Chaperone KamBC | Kirsten Wolthers |
| Shi Long Pan | Chemistry | Single exosome sizing and surface receptor profiling | Isaac Li |
| Elise Phelan | Chemistry | Probing molecular force regulating cell-cell interactions | Isaac Li |
| Kristyn Tamelin | Chemistry | The Preparation and Purification of Mucins for Bacterial Utilization | Wesley Zandberg |
| Kadie Wert | Chemistry | Functional carbon nitride for photocatalytic water purification | Robert Godin |
| Micah Yang | Chemistry | Development of DNA-based artificial adhesion bonds | Isaac Li |
| Kalli Van Stone | Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics | Sqilxwcawt calendar mobile application design | Ifeoma Adaji |
| Nasser Mohammed | Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics | Calibration of the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) Telescope’s all-sky radioastronomical polarization angle | Alex Hill |
| Miles DeBoer | Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics | Creating Novel Adversarial Defences for AI Systems | Apurva Narayan |
| Name | Title | Supervisor |
| Anna Bernath | Classifying activation states of brain microglia | Andis Klegeris |
| Erica Packard | Fire severity: effects on soil fungal communites | Melanie Jones |
| Owen Partrick | Genomics of plant responses to pathogenic and beneficial fungi | Michael Deyholos |
| Ryland Giebelhaus | Metabolomics of Mitragyna speciosa and Commerical Kratom Products | Susan Murch |
| Evan Keenan | Covalent attachment of carbon nitrides on solid substrates | Robert Godin |
| Matthew McConnachie | Combinatorial biochemistry for alkaloid pathway elucidation | Thuy Dang |
| Emily Knudson-Goerner | Determination of the structures and digestibility of CD57-like milk oligosaccharides | Wesley Zandberg |
| Gillian Godden | Cooling of the turbulent intersteller medium | Alex Hill |
| Zixiao (Shawn) Zhao | Investigation of the measurement error in Raman spectroscopy | Jeffrey Andrews |
| Emily Mellors | Adaptive MRI coil development | Rebecca Feldman |
| Bryce Dyck | P-tipping in the forest tent caterpillar host-parasitoid system | Rebecca Tyson |
| David (Phillip) Shifflet | Computational Tools for Modelling Biological and Cultural Evolutionary Processes | Liane Gabora |
| Name | Title | Supervisor |
|
Maya Bandy |
Examining the effects of Glyphosate exposure on the gut bacterica |
Deanna Gibson |
|
Seamus McRae |
Regulation of brain support cell activity by exracellular proteins |
Andis Klegeris |
|
James Sader |
Designer probiotics and immunometabolism |
Deanna Gibson |
|
Matthew Stewart |
CRISPR Cas9 knockout of OCTs increased larval mortality to TEA in fruit flies |
Mark Rheault |
|
Matthew McConnachie |
Investigation of the camptothecin biosynthesis pathway in Fusarium solanii |
Thuy Dang |
|
Abigail Law |
Directed self-assembly of nanosheets to control the morphology of carbon nitride photocataly |
Robert Godin |
|
Marisa Aviani |
Developing a cellular assay to study new ligands for voltage-gated calcium channels (CaV’s) |
Frederic Menard |
|
Allison Leam |
Characterization of kinetics of serial adhesion bonds and their regulation in cell division |
Isaac Li |
|
Nicholas Rieske |
Characterize Algebraic Monogenic Number Fields |
Javad Tavakoli |
|
Kendra Scarrott (Hunka) |
Raman spectroscopic analysis for monitoring radiation induced damage in biological systems |
Andrew Jirasek |
|
Nicholas Kayban |
Proximal-Like Algorithms for Non-Convex Functions |
Shawn Wang |
|
Stephanie Hamilton |
Discrete Optimization Solutions for Exam Scheduling |
Donovan Hare |
|
David Shifflett |
A Toolkit for Modelling Biological and Cultural Evolutionary Processes |
Liane Gabora |
|
Ella Block |
Methane uptake kinetics in arid grassland and upland forest soils |
Ed Hornibrook |