UBC Feature Web Site
explorAsian – Celebrating Asian Heritage Month:
UBC This Week is a weekly summary of UBC people in the news, recent media releases and upcoming event highlights. UBC This Week past issues are also available on-line.
Sign up for UBC This Week and other UBC Public Affairs e-mail services at www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/eservices.
Upcoming Event Highlights
- Apr. 24: Supply Management Acquisition Solutions Exhibit
- Apr. 25: Nanostructured Materials by Design
- Apr. 25-27: Men’s baseball v. Lewis-Clark State College at Nat Bailey Stadium
- Apr. 26: Faculty of Medicine Annual Spring Gala
- Apr. 26: Modern Punjabi Literature and its Worlds : A seminar in honor of Sadhu Binning
- Apr. 29: How the Arabidopsis Root Gets its Stripes: Cell-type Pattern Formation
- Apr. 29: Lunch Hour Bike to Work Primer – provides great cycling tips!
Find out what else is happening at UBC this week. For sports events, visit the UBC Athletics site at www.gothunderbirds.ca/schedule.asp.
UBC People
- UBC Library wins CCAE awards
- More awards at the Library
- Computer science professors and students honoured
- Immunology and zoology researcher to be CIHR new investigator
- UBC statistics professor wins national honour
- UBC engineering students prove their worth
- United Way loaned rep opportunity
- Persistence of Vision Film Festival hits the screen
- Open House at the Asian Library
- Tibetan Buddhism expert comes to UBC
- Exploring modern Punjabi literature at UBC
- T’ai chi and green technology at the Garden
- UBC sponsors ExplorAsian 2008
UBC People
UBC Library wins CCAE awards
The UBC Library Vault won the gold award for Best E-Innovation in University Advancement in the 2008 Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education Prix D’Excellence awards program. The Library’s newsletter, Friends, won bronze for Best Newsletter.
To view the Vault site, visit www.ubcvault.ca.
More awards at the Library
UBC Library has awarded professional development awards to three of its employees. Katherine Kalsbeek, Reference Librarian, Rare Books and Special Collections, and Alan Doyle, University Records Manager, University Archives, have won the 2007/08 and 2008/09 instalments of the Diana Lukin Johnston Award, respectively. Patricia Foster, Senior Library Assistant, Woodward Biomedical Library, has won the 2008/09 Suzanne Dodson Award.
The Diana Lukin Johnston Award was established by Derek Lukin Johnston in memory of his wife Diana, an avid reader and supporter of libraries. The Suzanne Dodson Award is a new endowment provided by Suzanne Dodson, a long-time UBC Library employee who retired in 1999. The awards help fund professional development opportunities for Library employees.
The Library has also chosen three student winners in a UBC Library Vault undergraduate contest for proposals on involving new audiences in the Vault and its special collections. The winning team includes Aisha Tejani and Aman Bhullar from the Sauder School of Business, and Sarah Alexander Mehta from the Faculty of Arts.
Computer science professors and students honoured
Prof. Kellogg Booth, Department of Computer Science, has been awarded the 2008 Achievement Award by the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society in recognition of his contributions to the development of computer graphics, visualisation and human-computer interaction in Canada.
For more information, visit www.cs.ubc.ca/~ksbooth/gi/archive/achvmnt2008.html
Computer science faculty Assoc. Prof. Norm Hutchinson and Assoc. Prof. Michael Feeley, and graduate students Brendan Cully, Dutch Meyer and Geoffrey Lefebvre, received the Best Paper Award at the Networked Systems Design Implementation 2008 Conference for their paper Remus: High Availability via Asynchronous Virtual Machine Replication.
For more information, visit www.usenix.org/event/nsdi08.
Immunology and zoology researcher to be CIHR new investigator
Assist. Prof. Ninan Abraham, Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Department of Zoology, has been awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award. The five-year award worth $300,000 will support Abraham’s research into the regulation of T-cell development, function and transformation.
For more information, visit www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/36135.html.
UBC statistics professor wins national honour
Prof. Paul Gustafson, Department of Statistics, has been awarded the 2008 Centre de recherches mathématiques-Statistical Society of Canada Prize for his work applying Bayesian statistical methodology to epidemiology and public health.
For more information, visit www.stat.ubc.ca/News/index.php?year=2008&month=03#_30.
UBC engineering students prove their worth
UBC Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. candidate Christopher Michalak has won the Interactive Brokers Group’s (IBG) Collegiate Trading Olympiad, beating out 371 students from 32 countries to garner the top prize of $100,000.
Each contestant submitted an automated trading plan to generate as much money as possible subject to a minimum of 25 trades. Starting with $1 million in phantom money, Michalak’s trading account grew to a final balance of $3,135,104 by the end of the eight-week competition.
IBG created the Olympiad to highlight the growing need for engineers and computer science professionals in the financial services industry.
For more info, visit www.engineering.ubc.ca/news-events/article.php?page=/2008/04/ubc-mechanical-engineering-student-wins.html.
UBC Mechanical Engineering MA student Ambrose Chan has won the 2008 Gordon M. MacNabb Scholarship Foundation Supplement, a $5,000 one-year supplement to promote graduate research in the field of intelligent systems in Canadian universities and establish links between graduate students and Canadian industries using intelligent systems.
For more information, visit www.nserc.ca/sf_e.asp?nav=sfnav&lbi=2b_9.
United Way loaned rep opportunity
Each year, two UBC Vancouver employees are ‘loaned’ to United Way to serve as an extension of United Way staff as full-time resources to Employee Campaign Co-ordinators and committees at workplaces around the Lower Mainland.
Each employee receives training from United Way and works on the campaign from the end of August to mid-December. Once trained, one of the UBC employees would assist primarily on the UBC United Way Campaign and the other would be based at United Way of the Lower Mainland in Burnaby.
All full-time, continuing employees are eligible to apply for these positions. While on loan from UBC, the employees would continue to receive full pay and benefits.
For more information, visit www.unitedway.ubc.ca.
Persistence of Vision Film Festival hits the screen
Fourth-year UBC Film students will present seven short films created over the course of the year on 16 mm film at the 19th annual UBC Persistence of Vision (POV) Film Festival.
Date: April 25-26
Time: 7 p.m.
Place: Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, 855 Granville St., Vancouver
Info: http://web.mac.com/tfcw/POV/Home.html or ubcpov19@gmail.com
Open House at the Asian Library
As part of the explorAsian festival, UBC’s Asian Library will hold an open house, Beyond the Bookends, offering guided library tours, workshops on Asian-language electronic resources, a book sale and library bazaar, food fair and various displays and workshops.
Date: April 26
Time: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Place: Asian Library, 1871 West Mall
Info: www.library.ubc.ca/asian/openhouse/Program.html#CantoneseOperainBC
Of special note as part of the open house is a course offered by UBC’s Botanical Garden on Plants in Japanese Gardens – The Earth’s Fabric Transformed. The course, taught by Tom Wheeler, a certified journey-person in practical horticulture and Horticulturalist of Special Projects at UBC, will examine how plants are selected, sited and maintained at Nitobe Memorial Garden.
Date: April 26
Time: 9 a.m. – Noon
Place: at the entrance to Nitobe Memorial Garden, 1895 Lower Mall at NW Marine
Cost: (General) $40.00 or (Garden Members) $33.00
Note: Advanced registration required at botg@interchange.ubc.ca or 604-822-3928. Dress for the weather.
Tibetan Buddhism expert comes to UBC
UBC’s College for Interdisciplinary Studies (CFIS) and Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada will host three public lectures by Prof. Robert Thurman, the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University and the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk.
- April 26, 1:30 p.m.: The Manjushri Connection: Relations Between Tibetan and Chinese Buddhisms
Place: Ridge Theatre, 3131 Arbutus Street; tickets available in advance at the Ridge box-office - April 27, 10 a.m.: The Layman Vimalakirti and the Basic Mahayana Buddhist Path
Place: Tung Lin Kok Yuen, Canada Society, 2495 Victoria Drive; first-come, first-served seating - April 27, 8 p.m.: Buddhism as a Civilization Matrix and the Current Global Crisis
Place: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, 6265 Crescent Road; tickets available in advance at the Chan box-office
This is part of an ongoing series jointly sponsored by CFIS and Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada, a not-for-profit organization promoting Buddhist teachings.
For more information, visit www.cfis.ubc.ca/thurman.html.
Exploring modern Punjabi literature at UBC
UBC’s Centre for India and South Asia Research and the Department of Asian Studies, in association with the Dean of Arts and the Departments of Anthropology and English, will host the conference Modern Punjabi Literature and its Worlds.
The conference is dedicated to sessional lecturer Sadhu Binning, who will retire this year from teaching Punjabi at UBC.
Writers, students and scholars will discuss Punjabi literature as a North American and world literature through academic papers in English on modern Punjabi literature (including Diaspora literature), readings in Punjabi and discussion by local poets and students. All sessions will take place in English, except for the writers’ discussion and poetry reading on the second day.
Date: April 26-27
Place: UBC Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall
Info: www.asia.ubc.ca/index.php?id=5257&backPID=5257&tt_news=1683
T’ai chi and green technology at the Garden
UBC’s Botanical Garden will offer a 10-session yang style t’ai chi class in the garden. T’ai chi is characterized by slow, continuous and gentle movements, and is practiced with the intent to strengthen muscles, improve balance and relieve stress. Participants will learn a sequence of 108 postures in the long form of the yang style.
Date: April 24 – June 26
Time: 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Cost: (General) $75 or (Garden Members) $70
Place: UBC Botanical Garden (daylight and weather permitting) or in the Reception Centre, 6804 S.W. Marine Dr.
Note: Advance registration required at nadine.diner@ubc.ca or 604-690-5375
The Garden will also host a seminar by Adj. Prof. Barbara Zeeb, Department of Biology at Queen’s University, on Phytoremediation – Green Technology is Put to the Test. Phytoremediatation is a plant-based technology used to remediate contamination by the uptake of contaminated water. Plants can be used to contain, remove or degrade contaminants.
Date: April 28
Time: Noon – 1 p.m.
Place: Botanical Garden Reception Centre, 6804 SW Marine Drive
Info: call 604-822-3928 in advance to book a seat
Note: Bring a bag lunch. Coffee and tea supplied.
UBC sponsors ExplorAsian 2008
As part of the nation-wide celebration of May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada, UBC will be the title sponsor for ExplorASIAN 2008, a community initiative to highlight the art, education, and cultural expressions of Pan Asian Canadian artists and culture. The festival includes performances, demonstrations, lectures and community displays around the theme Many cultures: Many languages: One celebration.
The month’s festivities will open with an evening of neo-traditional Japanese music, Infinite Echoes from Japan: New Directions in Traditional Japanese Music.
Date: May 1
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: Frederic Wood Theatre, 6354 Crescent Road, UBC
Info: www.explorasian.org
Tickets: free admission; reservations are recommended. RSVP by 5 p.m., April 25
