UBC This Week

The President’s Advisory Committee has posted a call for nominations and applications for the selection of a senior advisor to the Provost on Women Faculty, a new leadership role at UBC’s Vancouver campus.  The profile and outline of responsibilities for the candidate can be found at http://www.vpacademic.ubc.ca/ 

Nominations and applications can be submitted to Dr. David Farrar, Provost and Vice President Academic, and Chair of the search committee c/o Mary Hayden, Director, Office of the Provost and Vice President Academic, mary.hayden@ubc.ca, fax 604-822-3134. Applicants should submit a current curriculum vitae, statement of interest, and the names of three referees. 

The deadline for receipt of nominations and applications is May 20, 2011.

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UBC engineering students Kevin Lowe, Hengameh Hoseini , Rory Moglove and Andrea Slade have been awarded the 2011 Dr. Jim McEwen Excellence in Engineering Design Award from the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Society of British Columbia for their assistive reading device for people living with ALS. The students developed a way to connect a variety of common interface devices used by people with disabilities, such as joysticks and single-push buttons, to a tablet device using a Bluetooth connection.  The students are supervised by professors Antony Hodgson and Craig Hennessey. A $5,000 prize accompanies their award.

“The student team focused on helping people with ALS increase their independence in reading,” says Hodgson. “Due to loss of muscle strength, people with ALS lose the ability to hold a book or magazine, and eventually cannot activate the buttons or make the swiping motions needed to control the newer e-reading devices. This means that people with ALS no longer need a caregiver to turn pages for them when they’re reading, and this has a significant impact on their quality of life. Some of the people who tried the students’ device didn’t want to give it back at the end of the trial.”

Read the full announcement at http://bit.ly/l8PcPP

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Sauder School of Business instructor Boyd Cohen, who teaches sustainable entrepreneurship for the MBA program, celebrated the launch of his new book this week with special guest Mayor Gregor Robertson, who is leading Vancouver’s efforts to become the greenest city in the world by 2020.

In Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change, Cohen with co-author Hunter Lovins – Time Magazine’s Hero of the Planet and bestselling writer of “Natural Capitalism” – presents case studies of clean and green business innovations among international corporations, small business, NGO’s and municipalities. The May 16 event was hosted by Discovery Parks, Vancouver Greentech Exchange and CO2 IMPACT.

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Twice-weekly, Asia Pacific Memo publishes short text memos or video interviews on current issues in Asia and across the Pacific at http://www.asiapacificmemo.ca/.

Recently, two memos by UBC alumni were published:

• May 17: Turn of Tide: Singapore’s Watershed Election 2011
• May 10: Thai-Cambodia Border Clashes – What’s Fuelling them?

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