UBC This Week

Upcoming Event Highlights

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

UBC People


UBC People

Retired UBC registrar recognized with National Inclusive Education award

On June 28, 2010 retired UBC Registrar and Assoc. Vice-President Brian Silzer will receive a National Inclusive Education award from the Canadian Association of Community Living and the British Columbia Association for Community Living. The award will be presented at the 2010 Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC) conference, hosted by UBC Enrolment Services.

Silzer is being commended for his role in developing a way for students with developmental disabilities to attend UBC with support from STEPS Forward Inclusive Post Secondary Education. As Registrar, Silzer created a pathway for students with developmental disabilities to attend and complete their studies at UBC. Silzer created the registration category of ‘Access Studies’ and graduate procedures that enable students with intellectual disabilities to seamlessly access and benefit from the same resources and opportunities available to all students in the UBC community.

The award is being presented by Michael Bach, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Association for Community Living. Brian Sullivan, Vice-President, Students at UBC and Dr. Moira Stillwell, British Columbia Minister of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development will also be present to honour Silzer.

The award is being presented at the ARUCC 2010 conference hosted by Enrolment Services at UBC. ARUCC represents university and college registrarial professionals from 182 member institutions from all regions of Canada. This year UBC is hosting over 300 professionals from across the country who will spend four days attending sessions on topics focusing on student affairs, strategic enrolment management, recruitment and orientation, admissions, technology, professional development and records, registration and scheduling.

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UBC nature conservationist to attend Buckingham Palace garden party

Prof. Amanda Vincent, director of Project Seahorse at UBC’s Fisheries Centre, has been invited to attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace on July 1 to celebrate the 60th birthday of Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal (Princess Anne). This invitation recognizes Vincent’s inaugural win of the Whitley Gold Award in 1994 for her work to advance the conservation of seahorses in the central Philippines.
 
The Whitley Gold Award is the highest accolade given by the Whitley Fund for Nature and is given to individuals who are using conservation science to improve biodiversity and people’s lives and livelihoods.  Since 1994, Vincent has led Project Seahorse, which consists of the world’s leading experts on 300 species of seahorses, pipefishes and seadragons.  She is also Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation in UBC’s College for Interdisciplinary Studies.   

For more information on Vincent’s visit to Buckingham Palace, please visit: http://www.cfis.ubc.ca/ .  For more information on Project Seahorse, visit  http://seahorse.fisheries.ubc.ca .

 

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UBC a top Canadian institution in plant and animal sciences research impact

UBC ranks 19th in the world in plant and animal sciences research impact, according to data published this April by Times Higher Education. UBC’s research impact in the field, based on journal citations generated between January 1999 and December 2009, is the highest in Canada, and ranks just behind Michigan State, Cambridge, and Purdue. The findings are based on data extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters.

For information, visit www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=411170&sectioncode=26

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Human trafficking law a milestone for UBC professor

The Senate has passed Bill C-268, a private member’s bill that UBC Faculty of Law Asst. Prof. Benjamin Perrin helped draft.  The bill calls for mandatory minimum sentences for child traffickers.

Perrin is one of Canada’s leading experts on human trafficking and his work has led to significant improvements in Canada’s response to human trafficking.

 For more information, visit http://www.law.ubc.ca/news/2010/june/06_21_2010_perrin.html

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Materials engineering professor to chair new consortium

Anoush Poursartip, professor in the Dept. of Materials Engineering, is the Chairman of the new Canadian Composites Manufacturing Research and Development consortium (CCMRD). Announced June 1, the consortium is a collaboration of The Boeing Company and Canadian industry partners that aims to develop Canadian expertise and competitiveness in the composites field.

“A virtual R and D centre of this type is much needed in Canada,” said Pousartip.  “The CCMRD will help to advance the technological capabilities of Canadian industry while building stronger relationships betweenCanadian and international aerospace original equipment manufacturers, as well as Canadian material, equipment, component and software suppliers.”

Poursartip is also Research Director for Convergent Manufacturing Technologies, a member company in the consortium.

For more information, visit www.mtrl.ubc.ca/

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UBC wins CIHR grant to find molecular therapies for macular degeneration

A recent $1.5 million Canadian Institute of Health Research Team Grant will fund a program to develop novel molecular approaches to treat diseases of the retina, which is the tissue most commonly damaged in blinding diseases.

The team of four members from the Dept. of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, the UBC Centre for Macular Research and the Eye Care Centre at Vancouver General Hospital, include Prof. Kevin Gregory-Evans, Prof. Joanne Matsubara, Assoc. Prof. Cheryl Gregory-Evans and Assoc. Prof. Orson Moritz.

For more information, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/media/CIHR_macular_degeneration_grant.htm 

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UBC prof wins award from American Society of Transplantation

John Gill, an associate professor in the Division of Nephrology, won the Clinical Science Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplantation.  The award is given to a researcher at the associate professor level who has made a “substantial contribution” to transplantation medicine.

Gill is president-elect of the Canadian Society of Nephrology and President of the Canadian Organ Replacement Register. His focus is on clinical outcomes in kidney transplant patients, access to kidney transplants, living donor transplanation and cardiovascular risk in transplant patients.

For more information, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/about_us/Awards_and_Honours.htm#Transplant

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Graduate Studies announces appointment of Associate Dean, Grad Policy and Program Review

The Faculty of Graduate Studies announces the appointment of Philip Loewen to the position of associate dean, Grad Policy and Program Review, effective July 1.  Loewen joined UBC in 1987 and has been the department co-op coordinator, curriculum committee chair, graduate advisor and was elected to the UBC Senate as a representative for the Faculty of Graduate Studies in 2008. In 2005 he received the Canadian Mathematical Society’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

Loewen takes over this role from Jim Thompson, who has filled it since 2003.  Thompson served as associate dean, Research and Graduate Programs from 1998-2003 and has chaired the Graduate Academic Policy Committee since 2001.  In 2007, he served as acting principal, College for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Thompson will continue as Director, UBC Dairy Education and Research Centre and maintain an active part-time appointment with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

For more information, visit http://www.grad.ubc.ca/

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Mechanical engineering students win prestigious national scholarships

UBC mechanical engineering students won nine scholarships in the recent 2010/2011 National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada scholarship competition with a total value of nearly $360,000.

Four graduate students won NSERC Doctoral scholarships. From mechanical engineering, five students –three current fourth-year undergraduates and two current graduate students— won Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships to support their masters studies.

The students awarded are: Jeffrey Abeysekera, Richard Graetz, Sarah McFaul, Heather Murray, Eric Pospisil, Devin Todd, Irfan Usman, Victor Wang and Susana Zoghbi.

For more information, visit www.mech.ubc.ca/welcome.html 

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UBC graduate stays on campus with $25,000 Fellowship

Recent UBC graduate Michael Duncan was one of three to receive a TD Insurance Meloche Monnex $25,000 fellowship at the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) annual conference.
 
Duncan will complete his one year fellowship at UBC, working in three projects which include the new UBC Alumni Centre, a Community Government Engagement project, and a business and service review.

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UBC Press publications win awards

UBC Press announces its 2010 spring awarding-winning publications:

  • The Politics of Linkage: Power, Interdependence, and Ideas in Canada-US Relations by Brian Bow – 2009/2010 Donner Prize, The Donner Foundation
  • Makú: New History of Aboriginal-White Relations   by John Sutton Lutz – 2010 Harold Adams Innis Prize, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Science
  • Contributing Citizens: Modern Charitable Fundraising and the Making of the Welfare State, 1920-66 by Shirley Tillotson – shortlisted, 2010 Harold Adams Innis Prize, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Science
  • Home Is the Hunter: The James Bay Cree and Their Land  by Hans Carlson – shortlisted, 2010 Harold Adams Innis Prize, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Science
  • Finding Dahshaa: Self-Government, Social Suffering, and Aboriginal Policy in Canada  by Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox – shortlisted, 2010 Canadian Aboriginal History Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association; shortlisted, 2010 Donald Smiley Prize, Canadian Political Science Association
  • Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes  by Adam Chapnick – shortlisted, 2010 Dafoe Book Prize, Dafoe Foundation Canada’s
  • States of Nature: Conserving Canada’s Wildlife in the Twentieth Century by Tina Loo – shortlisted, 2010 François-Xavier Garneau Medal, Canadian Historical Association
  • The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada  by Liza Piper – 2010 K.D. Srivastava Prize, UBC Press; 2010 Clio for The North, Canadian Historical Association
  • The Nuture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer  by Sharon Wall – 2010 Clio for Ontario, Canadian Historical Association
  • The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History  by R. Douglas Francis – shortlisted, 2010 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, Canadian Historical Association

For more information, visit http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/books/awards.html

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Workshops available for Positive Space Campaign

Workshops for the Positive Space Campaign are intended to help make UBC more welcoming of its lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, transgender, transsexual, gender variant, two-spirit and intersex (LGBQTTI) population and understanding of issues of sexual and gender diversity on campus.

The training sessions this summer are:

  • July 6, 9:30 a.m.- 1 p.m.
  • July 13, 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m.
  • August 4, 12:30 p.m. – 4 p.m.
  • August 26, 12:30 p.m. – 4 p.m.

 The Positive Space Campaign is coordinated by UBC’s Equity Office.  Preregistration is required. To register online, visit http://www.positivespace.ubc.ca/workshop_registration.html.

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Punjabi language health event : Diabetes Health Forum

Presented by the UBC eHealth Strategy Office (in Punjabi only), this free public forum will explore the causes, prevention, treatment, and complications of diabetes, healthy eating, exercise advice, and more.

 Health professionals and community members from Vancouver, New Westminster, Victoria, Kelowna and Prince George will join through videoconferencing.  

This event is developed in partnership with Public Health Agency of Canada, BC Ministry of Health, Health Authorities of BC and the UBC Faculty of Medicine.  For more information, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/__shared/assets/Diabetes_Health_Forum16817.pdf

Date:    June 26
Time:    2  – 4:30 p.m.
Place:   Life Sciences Centre, Room LSC 2, 2350 Health Sciences Mall
Info:     Limited seating, register at www.iconproject.org or call
604-439-1050 ext. 4 (Safeway Pharmacy)

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