Graduate Convocation Medalists

Jenn Burt, who graduates with a PhD in environmental and resource management, spent nearly 300 hours in underwater kelp forests to conduct her thesis research. She also spent countless hours in dialogue and interviews with people in coastal Indigenous communities.

 She was studying the complex social and ecological dynamics governing the recovery of sea otters–notorious predators and architects of ecosystem change—that were eliminated from the B.C. coast during the maritime fur trade. Her research revealed that sea star mesopredators play a critical complementary role together with sea otters in enhancing the resilience of kelp forests. She also summarized the opportunities and barriers for coastal Indigenous communities that are adapting to the profound changes triggered by sea otters, drawing connections between the conditions that enable co-existence and issues of social justice in resource management.

She recently became the BC Marine Program Lead for Nature United, the Canadian affiliate of a global conservation organization. She is tasked with finding innovative solutions to the linked social and ecological challenges that face Canada’s Pacific coast.

Yu Yang, an international student who is graduating with a PhD in applied sciences, has invented a number of key algorithms for deploying viral marketing campaigns in social networks. His research solved a number of key problems in social marketing, including how to track top influential users in a constantly evolving social network, and how to motivate influential users to trigger effective social propagations for marketing purposes.

He is now collaborating with researchers at Alipay, the world’s largest mobile payment platform, to develop recommendations and marketing algorithms for Alipay’s network. He recently joined the City University of Hong Kong as an assistant professor.