UBC Reports | Vol. 46 | No. 16 | Oct. 19, 2000
Former graduate student named ‘young innovator’
Two faculty members and a former graduate student are among the
six winners of this year’s Science Council of British Columbia’s
Science and Technology Awards.
Douglas Bonn, a professor of Physics and Astronomy, is the recipient
of the Science Council’s New Frontiers in Research Award.
Bonn, who credits his high school physics teacher with inspiring
him to pursue a career in scientific research, received the prize
for his study of high-temperature superconductors.
Bonn’s success in studying how electrons respond to microwave
and infrared radiation has earned him recognition as one of the
world’s top superconductor experimentalists.
In 1999 Bonn earned an NSERC Steacie Fellowship, considered to
be one of the most important research prizes in Canada.
Fred Bunnell, a professor in the Faculty of Forestry, is the Science
Council’s Solutions Through Research Award winner this year.
For more than 30 years, Bunnell has applied his knowledge of forest
practices and his love of nature to solutions that can sustain both.
Bunnell, who joined UBC in 1973, is also the director of
the Centre for Applied Conservation Biology and the Forest Renewal
B.C. Professor in Applied Conservation Biology.
David Burgoyne, head of research at Inflazyme Pharmaceuticals in
Richmond, is the winner of the Young Innovator Award. The award
goes to an individual under 40 who has had a major impact on science
and technology in the province.
During his PhD studies at UBC in the early 1990s, Burgoyne
discovered a steroid with anti-inflammatory properties useful in
the treatment of diseases such as asthma. He was 25 years old at
the time.
The 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.
The award winners will be recognized at the annual Science Council
Awards Dinner at the Hotel Vancouver Oct. 23.
