Geology Masters graduate celebrates success

Geology Master's graduate Rebecca Strachan has excelled during her studies by being awarded with three international awards.

Rebecca, 22, from Horsforth in Leeds, received the following awards while studying for her MGeol in Applied and Environmental Geology:

  • Best Student Poster prize Mineral Deposits Studies Group, Southampton, 2014
  • Best Student Project prize Mineral Deposits Studies Group, Dublin, 2016
  • Best Student Talk prize, SGA Biennial meeting, Nancy, France, 2015

Rebecca beat off stiff competition from PhD students to win the best poster prize in Southampton, and then this was followed by an exceptional talk in Nancy, France. This conference was made up of over 550 delegates which included over 150 student presentations, again mostly by PhD students, but Rebecca was awarded one of three Best Talk prizes. The year was rounded off by her MGeol project being selected by the MDSG community as the best Master’s dissertation project in the country.

Rebecca’s MGeol research was undertaken with a scholarship awarded by leading mining consulting practice, SRK Consulting. She completed her fieldwork in Ghana, where she helped to revise the geological model for gold mineralisation in the Wassa mine.

Speaking about the awards Rebecca said: “Winning these accolades was amazing. Although the prizes are the result of hard work, they also reflect the support of a very encouraging department and a tutor that believed in my abilities.”

Immediately after graduating from Leicester, Rebecca worked for a gold exploration company in Portugal. She is currently applying for PhD projects in structural geology to continue her love for the subject and with the aim of specialising as a Structural Geologist.