Goudge Named CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar
September 15, 2021
Jackson School Planetary Sciences Assistant Professor Joins Cohort of Diverse Scholars
Jackson School of Geosciences Assistant Professor Tim Goudge has been chosen as a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, an international program that supports outstanding early-career researchers through mentorship, a global network, professional skills development and approximately $80,000 in unrestricted research support for two years.
“The CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program is one of the most selective and prestigious early-career opportunities for young researchers anywhere in the world,” said Alan Bernstein, president and CEO of CIFAR. “These young people are selected for their excellence in research as well as their potential to become the leaders of tomorrow. They are mentored by some of the world’s top natural or social scientists and are given the unique opportunity to join a close-knit community of CIFAR fellows, challenging each other with new ideas and addressing some of the most exciting and important questions facing science and humanity.”
Goudge, who joined the faculty in the Department of Geological Sciences in 2019, is one of 19 scholars in the program’s 2021-23 cohort. He joins a cohort with researchers from eight countries: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, China, France and Chile. The diverse group of researchers includes specialists in economics, health, sociology, fungal infections and other areas. They will support several of the CIFAR research programs, but the researchers will come together as a cohort at times to learn from each other.
“CIFAR is all about growing collaborations,” said Goudge. “The Global Scholars program brings together all sorts of really smart people — people who do research that is completely different from what I do. I am really looking forward to interacting with this group and seeing what similarities really do exist in term of research methods (and) how we go about discovering things.”
Goudge grew up in Canada and earned a bachelor’s degree in geological engineering from Queen’s University and a master’s and doctorate in geological science at Brown University. He came to the Jackson School as a distinguished postdoctoral fellow in 2015 before joining the faculty. Today, he studies how planetary landscapes evolve and uses remote sensing data to look at signatures of surface processes recorded in the topography, mineralogy and sedimentary rock record of Mars, Earth and other planetary bodies.
As part of the Global Scholars program, Goudge will join CIFAR’s “Earth 4D: Subsurface Science & Exploration” program. He will bring his expertise in planetary sciences to collaborate with the experts in this program that are focused on research around the exploration for life in the subsurface of Earth and other planets in our Solar System.