UBC This Week

UBC researchers Patrick John Keeling and Sarah Perin Otto were granted fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in its 87^th annual competition for the United States and Canada. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants.

In molecular and cellular biology, botany professor Keeling was recognized for his research on the role of coral reefs in apicomplexan parasite origins.   In organismic biology and ecology, zoology professor Otto was recognized for her research in evolutionary responses to extreme environments in yeast.

For more information, visit http://www.science.ubc.ca/news/535

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Surrey Memorial Hospital has officially become the 11th clinical academic campus of the UBC Faculty of Medicine, thanks to the start of a $512-million expansion project that was officially launched this month by Premier Christy Clark.

The project includes an eight-storey critical care tower and a new, larger emergency department about five times the size of the old one, a new perinatal centre of excellence for high-risk newborns, a larger adult intensive care unit and an expanded academic space, including classrooms, a library and other educational supports.

“Surrey is one of British Columbia’s fastest growing cities and residents deserve top-quality health care,” said Clark. “This much-needed expansion will increase the number of beds at Surrey Memorial by close to one-third and help to ensure we continue to meet the health needs of Fraser Valley families for years to come.”

“Expansion of this important regional hospital is a great opportunity to improve access to care, including specialized health services, for residents of our large and fast-growing region. State-of-the-art facilities will support recruitment of more doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals to provide care to families from Surrey, from neighbouring communities and from across the province,” said Dr. Nigel Murray, president and CEO of Fraser Health.

For more information, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/media/201104/Surrey_Memorial_Hospital_becomes_UBC_s_latest_Clinical_Academic_Campus.htm#beegan

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Amartya Sen, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics, will receive an honorary degree from UBC on April 21.  Members of the UBC community are invited to attend the special ceremony where Sen will speak. 

Sen’s work combines the disciplines of welfare economics, human development theory, social choice theory, public health and the economics of war and peace.  He is best known for his work to understand the causes of famine.

Date: April 21
Time: 3 p.m.
Place: UBC Auditorium, 6344 Memorial Rd.
Info: Tickets available at the UBC Auditorium Box Office
 Box office hours: 11 a.m. -1 p.m. (Tues. Fri.)
 http://www.ceremonies.ubc.ca/honorary-degrees/sen/

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Ravi Sidhu, assistant professor in the Dept. of Surgery, has been chosen as the recipient of this year’s Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) Young Educators’ Award.

This award recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to medical education and who are in the early years of their academic career. The award will be presented at this year’s Canadian Conference on Medical Education to be held in Toronto in May. 

Sidhu, one of three vascular surgeons at St. Paul’s Hospital, is director of Postgraduate Education in the surgery department, and also is the Core Surgery program director.

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

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Weihong Song, a professor in the UBC Dept. of Psychiatry and a member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC Hospital, has uncovered a potentially “vicious cell cycle” by which Alzheimer’s plaque formation is perpetuated in sporadic cases of the disease—and a possible treatment.

Read more at http://www.brain.ubc.ca/news/news_archives/2011updates.htm#otc_anti-inflammatory_drugs_may_help_prevent_alzheimers.

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A collaborative research project involving UBC’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Departments of Chemistry and Materials Engineering has recently received $491,000 in grant funding from the Collaborative Health Research Projects (CHRP) Program.

The funding will support a three-year research project focusing on the development and potential mechanisms in bifunctional lanthanide compound enhancement of deteriorating bone structures.

“Our goal is to translate the results of our early stage lanthanide hydroxypyridinone discovery into drug candidates for the treatment of a number of bone density disorders,” says principal-investigator Chris Orvig of the UBC Dept. of Chemistry, and long-time associate member of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Other members of the successful team are co-investigator Dr. Kishor Wasan from Pharmaceutical Sciences and co-investigator Dr. Rizhi Wang, Canada Research Chair in Biomaterials.

The CHRP Program is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

For more information visit http://www.pharmacy.ubc.ca/aboutus/faculty-news

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Eugene Barsky, a science and engineering librarian at UBC Library, has won an award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE, Engineering Libraries Division) for his work involving the digitization and promotion of decades of information on mine reclamation.

Barsky was given the Innovation in Access to Engineering Information award for the project, a collaboration between UBC Library and the British Columbia Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation.The effort resulted in free, open access to more than 30 years of symposium proceedings that are hosted on cIRcle, UBC’s information repository, at https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/6934.

Certificates will be awarded in June at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference and Exposition.

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UBC civil engineering professor Ken Elwood, who was attending an earthquake engineering conference in Christchurch New Zealand at the time of the quake on Feb. 22, 2011, shared his expertise in a videoconference  on April 6 titled “Briefing on February Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake.”

The talk was coordinated by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. Videos of the presentations will be posted at http://peer.berkeley.edu/events/2011/03/briefing-on-christchurch-new-zealand-earthquake/  for viewing after April 16th.

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UBC engineering students Andy Tsai, Carol Lee, Jinting Zhu and Peter Guan, are heading to New York City to compete in the 2011 NYC Next Idea Competition at Columbia University, held on April 4 to 8.

The student team co-founded ReFleX Wireless, a multi-patient wireless monitoring solution for hospitals, which facilitates more effective patient monitoring and reduces excess wires currently cluttering hospitals. The team’s prototype uses wireless technology to monitor the torso-orientation and body temperature of multiple patients simultaneously in real–time.

For more information, visit www.engineering.ubc.ca/news/2011/mar31.html

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Undergrad students in New Venture Design, a course jointly offered by UBC’s Sauder School of Business and Faculty of Applied Science, have taken home close to $20,000 in prizes at recent entrepreneurship competitions for innovative products they designed in class.

BCom students James Clift, Paul McLaughlin and Melissa Jang, and engineering students Levi Stoddard, Thomas Zhou and Mustafa Abousaleh, won the $10,000 first prize at the Evansville New Venture Creation Competition held at the University of Evansville in Indiana on March 25. They also snagged $5,000 worth of prizes at the Tony Brower Innovation Exposition at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops on March 26.

The team’s winning product, the Luminex EcoLight System, was developed in the two-term BCom/Applied Science class which pairs commerce and engineering students together to invent products, file patents, develop working prototypes and seek out funding for new start-ups.

The Luminex EcoLight System is a set of energy-saving reflective window blinds that maximize the amount of sunlight reflected into a room. The blinds move automatically throughout the day, tracking the sun’s movement and redirecting its light onto the ceiling. The room is then equipped with an ambient light sensor, which limits the use of artificial lighting accordingly to save energy.

A second team of New Venture Design students made up of BCom students Adrien Herberts, Joey Tai and Peter Yang, and engineering students Frankie Angai, William Yan and Eric Villeneuve, won a $2,000 prize at the UBC Venture Capital and Private Equity Entrepreneurship Competition on March 19 for their location-based social media app, WeeV.  WeeV is designed specifically for university students, allowing them to easily find friends, classmates and academic tutors in campus settings. 

Since its launch in 2003, Sauder’s New Venture Design has spawned numerous teams that have gone on to win business innovation competitions at home and around the world, including a successful pitch on CBC Television’s Dragon’s Den.

Alumni from the class in recent years have founded a series of successful businesses startups, including this year’s recipients of Sauder’s Dobson Foundation Grants, an award provided annually to New Venture Design grads in the initial stages of launching new ventures.

For more information, visit http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/News/News_Listing/News_Item_-_EcoLight

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The Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC) is a one-day celebration of the contributions of undergraduate scholarly inquiry/research at UBC. The conference is supported by the UBC Provost + Vice President, Research + International offices, and is managed by the Vice President, Students Office.

This year’s conference held on March 19 included over 60 undergraduate presenters from diverse disciplines at both UBC Vancouver and Okanagan campuses, approximately 200 student delegates, and 30 graduate student adjudicators.

Undergraduate student researchers are selected to share their findings through a peer competition; they present their research either via poster or oral presentation. This process is adjudicated by graduate students.

Oral presentation winners:

• April Dutheil , Bachelor of Arts, Honours Sociology, Arviat: An Intimate Re-Examination of Colonial Relations
• Jessica Baker, Bachelor of Science, Microbiology, Lavender Protects Against Infection Colitis
• Olivia Shi, Bachelor of Science, General Biology, Hormonal Regulation of Senescence Retardation and the Longevity of Fresh-Cut Chrysanthemum Flowers

 Poster presentation winners:

• Arjun Nanda, Bachelor of Science, General Science-Life Science, Yoga and other complementary and alternative therapies for quality of life in perinatal women
• Halley Keevil, Bachelor of Science, Honours Geological Sciences, Mineralogy of supergene carbonate-hosted nonsulphide Zn-Pb mineralization in southern and central British Columbia
• William Bowden, Bachelor of Applied Science, Engineering Physics, Electrical Option, Optimizing Microfluidic Technology for High-Content, Image-Based Assays of Mammalian cells at the Single Cell Level

 For more information on the winners, visit http://murc.ubc.ca/murc-2011-winners/

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