Vaniers: Kyle Hall passionate about solving gas hydrate riddle

Kyle Hall read the letter from the Vanier selection committee quickly but before he started celebrating, the PhD student thought he’d better read it again, just to be sure.

“I was so happy and so excited that I had to pause to make sure that I had read the letter correctly and it was all actually real,” says Hall, who has received the prestigious three-year, $50,000 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. “I was thrilled. This award is a major opportunity.”

The Vanier award will allow Hall to dive deep into his research in computational chemistry aimed at preventing gas hydrate formation in pipelines. Gas hydrates are crystals that form when water and natural gas are mixed at high pressures and low temperatures. They commonly occur at the bottom of the ocean, hundreds of metres deep in the Arctic’s permafrost and in oil and gas pipelines.

“My work is specifically looking at performing simulations of gas hydrates, and looking at different chemicals that inhibit their formation,” he says. “The approach that I am taking, trying to study inhibitors with simulations, is the similar approach taken by pharmaceutical companies to study and help with the development of different chemicals there. I think there is a huge potential for computational chemistry to be used to design chemicals for other industries as well.” Once he has completed the simulations, Hall will work on visually representing the collected data to gain insights into the chemistry of gas hydrate inhibitors. “The two areas dovetail together,” says Hall.

Hall’s PhD supervisors are Peter Kusalik, a professor in the Department of Chemistry; and Sheelagh Carpendale, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, who works with information visualization.

Hall is one of eight University of Calgary students to receive a Vanier award this year.

The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships program was created to attract and retain world-class doctoral students and to establish Canada as a global centre of excellence in research and higher learning. The program honours Canadian soldier and diplomat Major-General the Right Honourable Georges Philias Vanier (1888-1967), who served as governor general of Canada from 1959 to 1967.