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Josh Wisen

Like a gearhead who lands a gig tinkering with European luxury sports cars, Josh Wisen is revved about his summer job. But instead of racing best-in-class engines, the third year Geology student spent his summer working in a lab with a scanning electron microscope (SEM), the Lamborghini of its class.

The student from Halifax worked as a research assistant for two months, helping Dr. Georgia Pe-Piper with a petroleum exploration project in the Scotian basin, gaining knowledge and skills that will give him an edge in his future studies and in the work world following graduation.

Josh’s job centred on identifying Siderite, a mineral composed of Iron Carbonate. By looking for its many different types and determining the order in which it is formed, his work will help the study of hydrocarbon reservoirs and how they form.

The first task was to use an optical microscope with a 40x zoom to visually identify the Siderite. The second part of his work, and the most exciting for Josh, involved the use of the SEM.

“It’s not something that I think I would use during my coursework and so it’s cool to have been trained on how to use it. It’s something that any geologist who wants to see something really small would use,” Josh says.

“This is a machine that ordinarily you would have to pay to use, but with my job, I’m getting paid to use it.”

Able to zoom in 800x to digitally identify the Siderite and provide instant chemical analysis, the powerful SEM was the highlight of Josh’s experience.

“The skills I’ve learned this summer will definitely help me in my career going forward,” he says. “And what I’ve learned on the job will help with the classes I’m taking this fall like Petroleum Geology and Sedimentology – I’ll know it before I study it.”