Three members of the UBC community will be honoured at the 1999 B.C. Science
and Technology Awards Dinner at Vancouver’s Hyatt Regency Hotel Oct. 18.
Charles Laszlo, professor emeritus in the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dept., is the recipient of the Science Council’s Solutions Through Research
Award.
Laszlo is being honoured for his contributions to improving the lives of people
with hearing loss. He pioneered many technologies in this area, including, most
recently, FlightSound — a device that enables hard of hearing airline passengers
to communicate with cabin staff.
Laszlo, who is hard of hearing, was director of the Institute of Hearing Accessibility
Research at UBC. The institute brings engineers, audiologists, physicians, educators,
psychologists, and hard of hearing consumers together to work on hearing accessibility
problems.
He was also the founding president of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association,
and served as the president of the International Federation of Hard of Hearing
People.
J. Ross Mackay, professor emeritus in the Geography Dept., is the winner of
the Science Council Chairman’s Award for Career Achievement.
Canada’s foremost permafrost scientist, Mackay is being honoured for his lifetime
of contributions to science and technology.
He continues an active program of Arctic field research.
Calum MacAulay, a clinical associate professor of Pathology and associate
member in the Physics Dept., is the winner of the council’s Young Innovator
Award.
MacAulay, who is also head of cancer imaging at the B.C. Cancer Agency, is
a bio-physicist who is involved in applied technologies for the early detection
of cancer.
He and his colleagues have developed a number of innovative imaging systems
some of which are being patented and commercialized.
The B.C. Science and Technology Awards were established in 1980 by the Science
Council of B.C. to recognize outstanding achievements by the province’s scientists,
engineers, industrial innovators and science communicators.
Last year, UBC faculty and alumni swept the awards, winning all six awards
given by the council.
