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UBC This Week is a weekly summary of UBC people in the news, recent media releases and upcoming event hightlights. UBC This Week past issues are also available on-line.
Please note, we have added several features to the weekly UBC News Digest, including media releases, upcoming event highlights, and a web site of the week. To reflect these changes, this service will be known as UBC This Week.
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Recent UBC Media Releases
Upcoming Event Highlights
- Jan. 27: Men’s and Women’s Basketball vs. UVIC
- Jan. 27-29: Canada West Swimming Championships
- Jan. 28: Kronos Quartet featuring Tanya Tagaq
- Jan. 30: From Brazil to Banda Aceh and Beyond: UBC Students Reflect on Global Citizenship
- Jan. 31: Managing Canada’s Nuclear Waste: The Ultimate Engineering-Sustainability Challenge
Find out what else is happening at UBC this week.
UBC People
- Mechanical Engineering receives international Curriculum Innovation Award
- Engineering prof. awarded international Best Paper Award
- UBC physics alumnus named Ontario Deputy Minister of Research and Innovation
- UBC Okanagan to join high-performance broadband network
UBC People
Mechanical Engineering receives international Curriculum Innovation Award
The UBC Dept. of Mechanical Engineering has been selected to receive the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2005 Curriculum Innovation Award for its integrated second-Year program, Mech 2. This is the first time it has been received by a Canadian university.
The Mech 2 program is designed to develop mechanical engineering students’ analytical, practical and design skills with the goal of immediately applying knowledge and skills to practical engineering problems. In contrast to the traditional curriculum that offers disparate classes during a single term, Mech 2 students take only one course at a time. Mech 2 courses are designed to ensure good communication between the instructors in mathematics, engineering materials, electronics, mechanical engineering sciences, engineering design and technical communication.
“Mech 2 is a very challenging program that attracts a large number of academically superior students," said Dept. Head Nimal Rajapakse. "This award from the world’s leading mechanical engineering society is a clear recognition of the innovative concepts of Mech 2 and the excellence of the Mech 2 teachers and students”.
The ASME award will be presented on April 2nd, 2006, at the International Mechanical Engineering Education Conference in Beijing, China. For more information on Mech 2, visit www.mech.ubc.ca/~mech2.
Engineering prof. awarded international Best Paper Award
Engineering Assistant Prof. Z. Jane Wang has received the 2005 Best Paper Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Signal Processing Society (SPS) for her 2003 paper, "Anti-collusion fingerprinting for multimedia," co-authored by Wade Trappe, Min Wu and K. J. Ray Liu.
The SPS Best Paper Award honours the authors of exceptional papers in the field of digital or analogue signal processing in the past three years. The award will be presented at 2006 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing to be held in Toulouse, France, May 14-19.
UBC physics alumnus named Ontario Deputy Minister of Research and Innovation
UBC alumnus Alastair Glass has been appointed Deputy Minister of Research and Innovation by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, effective February 13, 2006.
Currently Chairman of Ireland’s Tyndall National Institute, over the last four years Glass has played a pivotal role in growing research and development programs in Ireland as the first Director of Information and Communication Sciences at Science Foundation Ireland, and in helping build effective partnerships between industry, government and academia.
Glass, who received his PhD in physics from the University of British Columbia, he has been a frequent advisor to U.S. government agencies and academic institutions, an invited speaker at international conferences and a published author and leader in technical societies.
UBC Okanagan to join high-performance broadband network
On February 7, representatives from BCNET, the Province of British Columbia, and three B.C. universities, including UBC President Martha Piper, will announce a new high-performance broadband network that connects UBC Okanagan and other post-secondary institutions in Surrey, Kamloops and Kelowna to existing networks in Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George. Up to 10,000 times faster than commercial Internet, BCNET’s specialized networks will help support connections, collaboration and innovation between B.C. universities.
BCNET is a not-for-profit society, collectively funded by B.C.’s universities, federal and provincial governments. For more information, contact Elise Everest at 604.268.7864 or elise.everest@bc.net.
