Sherry Schiff

is this year’s recipient of the Frank Rigler Award, the highest honour given by the Society of Canadian Limnologists.

Dr. Sherry Schiff, Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo

Sherry Schiff is recognized internationally as an environmental biogeochemist with specialized expertise in new isotopic and non-isotopic tracers of biogeochemical and hydrologic processes. She has published extensively on watersheds in both remote areas and landscapes impacted by agriculture and urbanization, focusing on interlinked cycles of carbon, nutrients and contaminants.

https://uwaterloo.ca/environmental-geochemistry/

Paths to Discovery:  Eureka, Surprise or “Of Course”?

Aquatic scientists work on problems relevant to human society.  Yet Discovery is at the heart of science. The perceived pressure to contribute original research can be daunting and a source of anxiety for young scientists. Here, examples from the latter part of my career will be selected to explore some of the many paths to discovery including failure. Research spans a range in field sites from small boreal headwater lakes, a high Arctic great lake to a highly impacted urban river, and encompasses processes on isotopic, DNA to whole watershed scales, and organisms from microbes to fish to humans.