Emerging Researcher Award

The Award

The design of this Award is an ocean-inspired mandala – a fused glass round disc (200mm in diameter), supported by a metal stand on a granite base. The fused glass round disc represents ‘earth’, with the artwork embodying the ‘elements of air, water, land and biota’, and the ‘exchange of mercury across these compartments’, with ‘the ocean, acting as a sink for mercury’ and ‘contributing the global mercury cycle’; the metal stand represents the ‘spinning of the earth on its own axis’.

The Emerging Researcher Award is awarded at all ICMGP conferences since 2022, to recognize the outstanding contributions made by emerging researchers in mercury research. Every ocean-inspired mandala produced in honour of this Award is to be a unique representation of handmade artwork, with the fused glass round disc on the metal axis stand being the cohesion of the Awards to be given in perpetuity. The beauty of the artwork of this Award therefore lies in the interpretation by the host country, as well as that of the recipient of the Emerging Researcher Award in Mercury as a Global Pollutant receiving the ocean-inspired mandala, as a keepsake.

The Emerging Researcher Award in Mercury as a Global Pollutant was proposed by Professor Alexandre Poulain (Canada) and Professor Britt Hall (Canada), and developed in liaison with Dr. Alexandra Steffen (Canada) and Dr. Joy Leaner (South Africa).