Associate Vice-President Research Suzanne MacDonald is pleased to announce that the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation has hired a new NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) SPARK Student, Jason Guriel. MacDonald is serving as the SPARK mentor.
SPARK stands for Students Promoting Awareness of Research Knowledge, a program that was launched in 1999 at 10 universities across Canada. Through SPARK, students with an aptitude for communications are recruited, trained and paid to write stories based on NSERC-supported research at participating universities.
A first-year graduate student in English, Guriel will be interviewing and writing stories on York NSERC-funded researchers throughout the year. He spent his undergraduate years at York, his attention divided between English and creative writing. He received York’s President’s Prize in Poetry in 2000, and twice received honourable mention. As well, York honoured Guriel in 2001 with the B.P. Nichol Award in Creative Writing.
Information on the NSERC Spark Student program is available at http://www.nserc.ca/science/spark/index.htm.