UBC gains honours in Royal Society of Canada

A psychologist who specializes in memory
and amnesia, a global fisheries expert and a leader in heart
disease research are among the eight University of British
Columbia faculty recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada.

The Royal Society of Canada was established in 1882 and
is regarded as the country’s most prominent academy of
scholars
and scientists. More than 150 UBC faculty are members of
the Royal Society of Canada.

“This recognition illustrates not only the scope of research
excellence here at UBC, but also the current rich research
environment in Canada,” says Indira Samarasekera, vice-president,
Research.

Psychology Prof. Eric Eich studies the interplay between
cognitive and emotional processes in both healthy and mood-disordered
individuals. His research centres on the effects of drugs,
emotions, and environments on learning and remembering.

Prof.
Daniel Pauly, of UBC’s Fisheries Centre, studies
the relationship among fish stocks, fishing practices and
the ecosystem. He is widely recognized for developing software
system methods that use simple measurements of length to
estimate fish age and growth. Pauly, subject of a recent
New York Times profile, heads a $4-million project that looks
at the impact of fisheries on the world’s marine ecosystems.

Dr.
Bruce McManus is co-director of the iCAPTURE Centre that
seeks to find cures for heart, blood vessel and lung diseases.
He is also the first scientific director of the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Circulatory
and Respiratory Health, where he leads development of a national
strategic research plan to investigate cardiac, respiratory,
vascular, brain (stroke), blood, and sleep disorders.

Other UBC faculty members elected to the society are:

Gerald Feltham, who studies the economics of accounting,
Shirley Sullivan, an expert in cognitive processes of early
Greeks; coal and petroleum geologist Marc Bustin; and biomedical
researcher John Schrader, Canada Research Chair in Immunology,
who investigates links between the immune system and blood
cells; and James Zidek, a statistician who focuses on environmental
science.

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