UBC This Week | Thursday, September 24, 2009

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.

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Recent UBC Media Releases

Upcoming Event Highlights

Find out what else is happening at UBC this week. For sports events, visit the UBC Athletics site at www.gothunderbirds.ca/schedule.

UBC People

UBC People

CPDD/Gates Foundation lends support to UBC-developed meds

The Consortium for Parasitic Drug Development (CPDD) has announced an initial funding of more than US$180,000 to iCo Therapeutics to assist its development of UBC Pharmaceutical Science Prof. Kishor Wasan‘s oral delivery of the drug Amp B. Used to treat Visceral Leishmaniasis, VL, a parasitic disease that is typically transmitted by sand flies in areas with poor sanitation conditions, Amp B is typically administered intravenously.

Prof. Wasan’s formulation – licensed to iCo Therapeutics under UBC’s Global Access Program – allows the drug to be taken orally and thus increasing its effectiveness in developing countries, where VL kill 60,000 people a year.

The CPDD is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grantee, developing drugs for the treatment of neglected diseases. The funding to iCo will help optimize the drug for use in tropical conditions.

For more information, visit http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2009/09jun04/diseases.html

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Incoming students receive Ike Barber Transfer Scholarship

Six incoming UBC students received the Ike Barber Transfer Scholarship this year from the Irving K. Barber British Columbia Scholarship Society. The students to receive $5,000 each are Braden Young, Peder Sande, Kalind Chatterson, Jennifer Rowe, Sandra Bargery, and James Powell.

The scholarships are awarded annually to undergraduate students who have completed two years at a public post-secondary institution in B.C. and are transferring to another degree-granting institution in B.C. to complete their degrees.

For more information on the fund, visit www.bcscholarship.ca.

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Engineering professor wins best paper

Prof. Sathish Gopalakrishnan, Dept of Electrical Engineering, and his co-authors have won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Industrial Informatics Best Paper award for 2008 for ORTEGA: An Efficient and Flexible Online Fault Tolerance Architecture for Real-Time Control Systems.

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Engineers receive most cited author award

Prof. Guy Dumont, Dept of Electrical Engineering, and co-authors including Prof. Chad Bennington, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, have received the Most Cited Author Award 2006-2009 from the Elsevier Journal Chemical Engineering Research and Design for their paper entitled Measuring flow velocity in pulp suspension mixing using ultrasonic Doppler velocimetry.

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Engineering student and professors receive Van den Akker prize

UBC mechanical engineering student David Goosen, Prof. James Olson, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, and Prof. Dick Kerekes, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, were awarded the Van den Akker prize for advancements in paper physics for their paper entitled Role of heterogeneity in compression refining. The award was given at the Fundamental Research Symposium at Oxford, U.K.

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UBC student awarded J. Michael Waldram Fellowship

UBC Forestry undergraduate student Maxime Lepine has been awarded the J. Michael Waldram Fellowship given by the Canadian Model Forest Network and the Canadian Institute of Forestry. The award is given annually to assist Aboriginal youths pursuing studies in natural resource management at the college or university level.

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Artist talk at Koerner Library

Koerner Library, in collaboration with Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, will present a talk by Cuban artist Antonio Eligio Fernandez (Tonel) whose large diptych drawing is displayed at the Koerner Library.

A video interview with Tonel can be viewed at http://belkin.ubc.ca/special/video-podcast.

Date: Sept. 29
Time: 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Place: BC Gas Conference Room, Koerner Library
Info: 604-8225600 or allison.collins@ubc.ca

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UBC Library at Word on the Street festival

UBC Library will be at the 2009 Word on the Street festival, an annual event that promotes reading and literacy to the community.

The library’s booth will feature a community card sign-up and information about the UBC Robson Reading Series, UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections, and UBC Library Vault.

Date: Sept. 27
Time: 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Venue: Library Square, 350 West Georgia Street
Info: http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/vancouver
Reception to follow

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Canvas Treasures on display at the Learning Centre

UBC Library has on display Canvas Treasures, rare images from the Library’s special collections including details of medieval manuscripts, maps from the world’s first modern atlas, vintage illustrations of popular fairy tales such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, and an illuminated 1575 Spanish Chant Manuscript that the Library recently digitized.

The images can be viewed on the UBC Library Vault at www.ubcvault.ca/canvastreasures.
Proceeds from the sale of artworks support the UBC Library.

Date: Sept. 21 – Oct. 12
Place: Gallery on Level 2 of Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
Info: Contact Manuela Boscenco at 604-827-5914 or manuela.boscenco@ubc.ca
or Jessica Woolman at 604-827-4275 or jessica.woolman@ubc.ca.

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Making a Difference speaker series

The UBC Faculty of Applied Science and the Vancouver Student Entrepreneurship Association will host the first event of the Making a Difference speaker series entitled Fired Up and Ready to Go: Blueprint for Young Entrepreneurs. Dr. Ossama Hassanein, chairman of the Rising Tide Funds and UBC alumnus, will share insights on how to become a successful entrepreneur.

Date: Sept. 29
Time: 5 – 6 p.m.
Venue: Room 1005, Forest Sciences Centre, 2424 Main Mall
Info: Contact Pardeep Virk at 604-822-4722 or pardeep.virk@ubc.ca
http://www.apsc.ubc.ca/news-events/speakerseries/index.php

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