Two UBC faculty members—Dr. Melissa McHale at UBC Vancouver and Dr. Lisa Tobber at UBC Okanagan—have been awarded $1-million Wall Fellowships, the university’s highest-value internal research awards. The fellowships will support transformative research projects to help communities across B.C. adapt to a changing climate and growing housing needs.

Dr. McHale’s project aims to help B.C. communities adapt to a hotter, drier and more fire-prone future—while rethinking the way climate research is done. Meanwhile, Dr. Tobber’s work focuses on understanding how buildings behave during seismic events, and improving climate resiliency, sustainability and design standards so they perform better and keep people safe.

For both researchers, the recognition comes at a pivotal moment—affirming not only the importance of their work but also their persistence through personal and professional challenges.

At UBC Vancouver, Dr. Melissa McHale had spent much of the past year navigating grief after losing both her parents within months of each other. When the news came that she had won the Wall Fellowship, she could hardly believe it.

“I kept going back to the email and being like, ‘Is this real?’” recalled Dr. McHale (pictured at left above), a professor in the faculty of forestry. Then came the bittersweet thought: She wished her parents were there to share the celebration.

At UBC Okanagan, Dr. Lisa Tobber hesitated before applying. Dr. Tobber had joined the school of engineering as a faculty member just four years earlier, right after completing her PhD. When the fellowship application opened she was on parental leave, which made the decision to apply feel especially daunting.

“I debated whether to apply, since awards of this scale rarely go to early-career researchers and the timing wasn’t ideal,” she said. “But this fellowship is about impact, and I believed in the difference my work could make.”

One of North America’s most significant internal research awards

The Wall Fellowships are the flagship awards of UBC’s Peter Wall Legacy Awards program. Funded through a transformative gift now exceeding $100 million from Vancouver entrepreneur and visionary philanthropist Dr. Peter Wall, the program represents an annual investment of approximately $4 million in UBC research in perpetuity—making it one of the most significant internal university research awards offered at a university in North America. 

This year’s fellows are leading high-impact, community-focused research that addresses two of B.C.’s most urgent and interconnected challenges: climate resilience and access to safe, sustainable housing.

“We are, as always, deeply grateful to Dr. Wall for his extraordinary vision and generosity,” said Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon, president and vice-chancellor of UBC. “Dr. McHale and Dr. Tobber are driving important innovations that will make British Columbia more livable, equitable and resilient in the face of our changing climate. Their impact will be felt for generations—and so will Dr. Wall’s.”

Building climate-resilient cities

Partnering with the City of Kelowna and Indigenous knowledge holders, Dr. McHale’s team is laying the groundwork for creating Canada’s first long-term social-ecological research site, joining a global network of more than 800 locations dedicated to sustainability science.

Using data mapping, land-use analysis and local engagement, the project will pinpoint where green infrastructure—like trees, shaded spaces and vegetation—can provide the greatest benefits: cooling overheated neighbourhoods, conserving scarce water, reducing wildfire risk and improving community well-being.

But for Dr. McHale, an internationally recognized urban ecologist, the work is about more than data. It’s about changing a narrative she believes is holding us back as a society. “Too often, we think of people as bad for nature,” she said. “But we have incredible creative capacity—we can solve problems, connect different ways of thinking and design ecosystems that function even better with us involved.”

That philosophy will shape every stage of the project. “The science matters, but how we do the science matters even more,” said Dr. McHale. “That means listening to communities, amplifying Indigenous leadership and co-creating solutions that are meaningful and enduring.”

While building this research platform in Canada, the team aspires to create the first international long-term ecological site to center Indigenous knowledge from the outset, with leadership and priorities set in partnership with local Nations. The team is also collaborating with a third-party organization that brings additional capacity and experience in supporting respectful, long-term engagement between Indigenous communities and researchers.

As Dr. McHale put it: “If we can bring together science, Indigenous leadership and local priorities, we can create solutions that work for people and the planet—not just for today, but for generations.”

Engineering safer, stronger homes

Dr. Lisa Tobber is a structural engineer with a specialization in earthquake engineering.

Her path to academia wasn’t linear. After high school, she worked as a receptionist for a construction company in northern B.C. Being around engineers sparked an interest in the field, and she realized she wanted a career where she could build things that help people. She eventually earned her bachelor’s degree and then PhD at UBC while raising two young children, before joining UBC Okanagan’s School of Engineering in 2021.

Now, with the support of the $1-million Wall Fellowship, Dr. Tobber is tackling one of B.C.’s most urgent challenges: creating seismically-safe, climate-resilient, sustainable, affordable housing—particularly for midrise buildings of four storeys or more.

While wood construction is common in B.C., it is limited by height restrictions. Her project will investigate whether precast concrete construction—a method where large building components are manufactured in a facility, transported to site, and then assembled—can provide an additional solution to expand housing options, particularly for midrise buildings.

Precast concrete has the potential to improve building durability, resist fire, speed up construction, reduce waste and improve quality through controlled factory production. But, as Dr. Tobber says, there’s still limited research on how it performs in earthquake-prone regions like B.C. “It’s something we need to research and understand,” she said.

Advancing this knowledge depends on experimental testing. Under Tobber’s leadership, UBC is assembling the new Multi-Axis Subassembly Testing system — the first of its kind in Western Canada. With the support of the Wall Fellowship, her team will use this equipment to study how precast concrete buildings perform in earthquakes. They will also design new building systems and develop advanced computer models to evaluate performance. The findings could inform updates to Canada’s building code—something Tobber is uniquely positioned to support as a member of the National Model Codes Committee on Seismic Design.

Her project also seeks to integrate Indigenous knowledge into housing design, creating culturally appropriate solutions and new opportunities for Indigenous students and communities. As a Métis person, Tobber sees this work as personally fulfilling: “There’s enormous potential to make housing more equitable and more resilient—and to ensure the next generation of buildings in B.C. is ready for the earthquakes we know will come,” she said.

Research-driven solutions to real-world challenges in B.C.

In addition to the two Wall Fellowships, this year’s Peter Wall Legacy Awards program includes 15 graduate student awards and eight additional faculty research awards—three individual and five team projects. Together, they are tackling challenges across a range of disciplines, from wildfire prevention and renewable energy to sustainable food systems and climate resilience.

Projects include helping B.C. communities generate and share their own renewable power through rooftop solar, battery storage and smart energy sharing; improving hatchery practices so more salmon survive their migration back to spawn; and finding new ways to repurpose and recycle electric vehicle batteries to reduce waste and reliance on scarce minerals.

Others include developing technology to turn agricultural wastewater in the Fraser Valley back into usable fertilizer; blending Indigenous fire stewardship practices with AI to reduce wildfire risk; and working with northern B.C. communities to monitor the effects of climate change on lakes. Additional projects include creating a solar-powered cooling system to protect vulnerable residents during extreme heat events and using microbial science to turn farm waste into clean energy.

Graduate student recipients are also leading diverse projects, including studying the impact of climate change on bumblebees and salmon, to using rainfall-runoff modelling to predict future river flows and flood levels, and working with Indigenous communities to map traditional knowledges to climate change data and fire patterns. Additional projects include restoring kelp forests along the coast; sustainable hydroelectric planning; reviewing water governance policies for flooding impacts; and increasing wild pollinators on blueberry farms.

JOURNALIST RESOURCES

Full list of Wall Legacy Award recipients, with a description of their projects: https://walllegacyawards.ubc.ca/awardees/