Six UBC professors were elected as new Fellows by The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) for 2010. The RSC consists of nearly 2,000 Fellows – men and women who are selected by their peers for outstanding contributions to the natural and social sciences, in the arts and in the humanities.
Prof. John Wilson Foster, Dept. of English, is an international authority on the literature and culture of modern Ireland, including those of his troubled native region of Northern Ireland. He has spent his academic career in Canada, where he has been a pioneer in Irish Studies since the 1970s.
Prof. Emerita Julie Cruikshank, Dept. of Anthropology, is an international leader in subarctic anthropology, particularly the living traditions of oral literature and storytelling in the Yukon Territory. Her publications trace the interplay between indigenous knowledge and narrative forms with experiences of landscape, colonialism, societal change and especially how differing cultural groups ‘‘know’’ the natural world and their own agency.
Prof. Thomas Lemieux, Dept. of Economics, is a labour economics specialist whose research aims to explain why inequalities have increased over the past three decades. He has also written articles about salary determination, the underground economy and the impact of baby boomers on the labour market.
Prof. Yusuf Altintas, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering is a leading scientific authority in machining and machine tool control engineering worldwide. He contributed to modeling of metal cutting mechanics, machine tool vibration, hatter stability, computer control of machine tools and virtual machining. His journal articles received more than 2,700 external citations since 1996. His algorithms are used by over 130 companies worldwide in improving the quality and productivity of machining operations.
Prof. Loren Rieseberg, Dept. of Botany, established hybridization as a creative force, leading to the origin of novel traits and new species. He also is a world leader in plant genomics, spearheading team efforts to sequence the genomes of several crops and weeds.
Prof. Chris Orvig, Dept. of Chemistry, is one of Canada’s best known inorganic chemists. He studies metal ions in the etiology, diagnosis, and therapy of disease, making seminal contributions, both fundamental and applied, to the understanding of metal ions in biological processes.
For more information, visit www.rsc-src.ca
