Sara Beck
Research Classification
Research Interests
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Recruitment
Complete these steps before you reach out to a faculty member!
- Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
- Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
- Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
- Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
- Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
- Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
- Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
- Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
- Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
- Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
- Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
- Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
- Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
- Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
- Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.
ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
Supervision Enquiry
Postdoctoral Fellows
Graduate Student Supervision
Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
Ultraviolet (UV) disinfection has long been employed to inactivate pathogens in water, but scaling and fouling on UV disinfection lamp quartz sleeves pose significant limitations, diminishing disinfection effectiveness. Common UV water disinfection systems include conventional mercury pressure UV lamps and UV light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Literature suggests that UV LEDs exhibit potential advantages over conventional mercury pressure lamps, being less susceptible to scaling; however, this has not been tested. This study compared the impact of iron, manganese, magnesium, and calcium on the ultraviolet transmittance of quartz glass. In terms of scaling formation on quartz glass, iron had the most impact, followed by manganese, magnesium, and calcium. Lime and lemon juice were efficient in removing scaling due to calcium and magnesium, but could not reverse scaling caused by manganese and iron. This study also compared the susceptibility of a conventional low-pressure (LP) UV system (PURA Water Products, LLC) and a UV-C LED (Crystal IS, an Asahi Company) system to scaling formation. Simulating varying hardness levels using calcium carbonate revealed increased hardness deposition and a decline in UV fluence at the optimal flow rate. Lime and lemon juice were tested as alternatives to citric acid for removing scaling on the quartz sleeves/windows. As water hardness concentration rose, both systems experienced escalated hardness deposition and effluent turbidity. Although the observed hardness deposition was similar, the LP UV system exhibited deposition mainly in the reactor and significant amounts on the quartz sleeve, while the UV-C LED system had minimal deposition in the reactor and on the quartz window. Subsequently, both systems showed a decline in fluence after scaling, with LP UV experiencing a higher percentage fluence decline. Lime juice effectively removed scaling in the LP UV, and lemon juice worked for the UV-C LED after determining the optimal cleaning time for each system, as both cleaning agents were found to have similar cleaning power on the reversal of calcium scaling.
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