Ken received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at UBC in the Zoology Department, specializing in aquatic ecology, and an M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. at UBC in the Faculty of Applied Sciences in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He worked for the Ministry of Environment in the Fisheries Research and Development Section on the UBC campus from 1979 to 2005, initially as a project biologist, and eventually as Section Head for Fisheries Restoration and Bioengineering. While in this position he conducted a set of large-scale adaptive management experiments, and is internationally recognized for his research in the design, operation and effects of hypolimnetic aeration systems, lake/reservoir fertilization, and stream/river enrichment. Ken transferred to the Greater Vancouver Regional District from 2005 to 2007 as Senior Scientist and was the project lead for the Environmental Management team, with responsibility for raw drinking water quality, and monitoring the environmental effects of wastewater discharges from the regions five wastewater treatment plants and municipal water withdrawals from the Capilano, Seymour and Coquitlam rivers. Ken was Secretary for the BC Living Rivers Program in 2008, Senior Scientist at Northwest Hydraulic Consultants until mid-2012, and taught part time in the BCIT Ecological Restoration Degree Program from 2010 to 2012. Ken is currently Director of the Rivers Institute at BCIT, an Instructor in BCIT’s Ecological Restoration Program and is an Adjunct Professor in Civil Engineering at UBC.
Ken received the Murray A. Newman Award for Significant Achievement in Aquatic Research in 1997, Fisheries Professional of the Year from the BC Ministry of Environment in 2001 and the Seth Diamond Award for Interdisciplinary Conservation Research from the University of Idaho-Moscow and University of Montana-Missoula in 2001. Ken is on the Board of Directors for the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.
Marvin is an instructor in the Fish Wildlife and Recreation Program (FWR) at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). At BCIT he teaches Fish Ecology and Management as well as Environmental Monitoring at the second year level. In addition, he supervises fisheries-related studies as part of the year-long Projects course in FWR. Marvin has had a 35 year history of working in freshwater fisheries in the province of British Columbia. This includes stints as a consultant, in academia, with the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission and with the provincial Ministry of Environment. Much of his work within and outside of government has focussed on stream and lake habitat-protection and restoration, including issues relating to gravel-removal from streams, lake fertilization and flow-augmentation for fluvial fishes. Marvin worked extensively on lower Fraser River white sturgeon during the 1990s as a BC fisheries program biologist and as a Director and member of the Science Committee with the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society. At Griffith University in Brisbane, in 2010, Marvin worked with Dr. Angela Arthington and they are comparing domestic water-use issues between the metropolitan communities of Vancouver and Brisbane with an eye to better managing community-watershed stream flows. In the 1990’s he also worked on Water Use Planning flow agreements, which modified stream discharges in a number of hydro-electric projects in south-western British Columbia to great success in increasing fish numbers. Species that he has, in particular, worked on over the years include sturgeon, kokanee, Salish suckers, coho and Chinook salmon. He has a BSc (Honours) and an MSc from the Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, and a DPhil from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. In addition he has won a number of aquatic conservation awards including the: Murray A. Newman Award for Significant Achievement in Aquatic Conservation (1999), the B.C. Wildlife Federation Ted Barsby Trophy Conservationist of the Year (2008), the Canadian Wildlife Federation Roland Michener Conservation Award (2010), and the Totem Fly Fishers Roderick Haig-Brown Conservation Award (2012).
Program Assistant, BSc and MSc in Ecological Restoration
Tel: 778-331-1392
Email: giti_abouhamzeh@bcit.ca