Rachael Westergaard Memorial Award
Master’s student Aaron Johnston was presented with the inaugural Rachael Westergaard Memorial Award at a ceremony held recently. The fund was set up by the Westergaard Family, through the Victoria University Foundation, as an endowment for a Master's Scholarship in Geophysics in honour of their late daughter Rachael, a student at Victoria from 2009 to 2012.
Master’s student Aaron Johnston was presented with the inaugural Rachael Westergaard Memorial Award at a ceremony held recently.
The fund was set up by the Westergaard Family, through the Victoria University Foundation, as an endowment for a Master’s Scholarship in Geophysics in honour of their late daughter Rachael, a student at Victoria from 2009 to 2012.
Erik Westergaard says the family is pleased to be able to support Victoria University and the geophysics department by making a donation to the Foundation and hoped that it would encourage students to undertake post graduate study in a field that was critically important to New Zealand.
The scholarship provides a $15,000 stipend plus one year of domestic tuition fees and is awarded to a student in the field of Geophysics, an area that Rachael was passionate about and was intending to study to gain her Master’s at Victoria.
Aaron, who completed a Bachelor of Science from Victoria University in 2011, has a strong interest in the oil and gas exploration sector. His Master’s thesis is a seismic interpretation of a large offshore collection of data northwest of New Plymouth, Taranaki.
His thesis research involves investigating large, deeply buried sub-marine channels which once transported hundreds of cubic kilometres of sediment into deeper water. “There is a lot to be learned about the geology of an area by studying the ways in which it was transported,” he says.
Aaron completed a summer scholarship in Geophysics in 2010, during which he used a range of software to download and manipulate seismic waveform data and gained on-site experience on a major geological research project.
Long term, Aaron hopes to work in the New Zealand oil and gas industry which, he says, has a huge amount of potential which is only just beginning to be recognised.
“It would be incredible to play a role in boosting New Zealand's economic prosperity.
“I'm very honoured to be chosen for the award and being the first is something special that I'll cherish for a long time. I know the Westergaards are setting a lot of geophysics students up for success in the future.”