Kelsey O’Brien’s work on her thesis has certainly paid off.

On March 6, the fourth year StFX earth sciences student won the best presentation award, based on her thesis, at the Environment meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Council for the Sciences (APICS).

Ms. O’Brien won in the undergraduate oral presentation category, which her honours supervisor Dr. David Risk describes as “an extremely difficult category with nearly 20 other presentations of high quality.”

The title of her research talk was "Soil Radon in Halifax Regional Municipality." Last summer, she worked at the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources in Halifax collecting radon soil gas data, which she has incorporated into a larger thesis project.

Ms. O’Brien says it was great to win. “You put a lot of work into your thesis, so it’s nice to be recognized for it,” says the 21-year-old Ottawa native.

Ms. O’Brien, who will be going to graduate school at Dalhousie University this fall for her master’s in earth sciences, says with the award comes recognition of her work, and it’s nice to have this foundation. “I’ve had lots of contact, which has been cool, to have a lot of people interested in what I’m interested in.”

Along with Dr. Risk, she is also supervised by Terry Goodwin of the Department of Natural Resources.

The APICS environment meeting was held at Memorial University in St. John's, NL from March 5-7. StFX was well represented with nine research presentations. Other presenters included Sara Klapstein, Heather Mosher, Brian Hansen, Jacques O'Neill, Shanel Raney, Larissa Allain, Marielle Lesperance, and Nick Nickerson (a Dalhousie student, but resident at StFX).