G. Gordon Suffel Fellowship Award Recipients 2025-2026

The Earth Sciences Department at Western annually awards the G. Gordon Suffel Fellowship for Graduate Studies in Applied Economic Geology. This fellowship is awarded to graduate students in a Master's or PhD program in Geology who have selected a thesis topic in applied economic geology, based on academic achievement and research merit. The recipient may receive this fellowship for up to three years, dependent upon performance and satisfactory progress. The student(s) selected will give a lecture to the Earth Sciences Department during the second term of the award, describing their research, is required to assist in curating the Suffel Collection, and asked to create a display to showcase their work to the public. 

The G. Gordon Suffel Fellowship award winners for the 2025-2026 school year are Janek Urbanski and Tsz Ho (Alex) Chiu.

Janek is an MSc student supervised by Dr. Dazhi Jiang and Dr. Neil Banerjee. His research is focused on understanding the structural and tectonic history of the Troilus deposit of Northern Quebec, and the role of deformation in the development and modification of the deposit. The Troilus mine is a past producer of gold and copper and is expected to re-open in the near future with resources of over 12 million ounces AuEq (gold-equivalent).

Tsz Ho (Alex) Chiu is a PhD student supervised by Dr. Jeremiah Shuster. He is the recipient of the G. Gordon Suffel Fellowship (2025-2026 and 2026-2027), the James M. Franklin Award (2026), and is one of eight Western University recipients of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (International) in 2026. His interdisciplinary research focuses on understanding how fungi recovered from mine sites interact with gold-bearing minerals and promote the dissolution of gold in natural and engineered environments. Using a multi-analytical approach (i.e., microbiology, geochemistry, mineralogy, and bioinformatics), he aims to develop gold dissolution processes into technologies for recovering gold and other metals from Canadian mine wastes.

Janek and Alex's research is summarized on the poster below.  

Poster describing Janek and Alex's research.