DDI Magazine has named Macy’s Herald Square in New York City as the platinum award winner in the annual Winning Windows Manhattan holiday retail window competition. Created by UBC alumnus Mike Inwood (BFA Design, ’01), the windows tell the story of a young boy’s dream on Christmas Eve, where he travels to a magical crystal forest and learns about the meaning of Christmas. To view a video of the unveiling of the windows, click here.
Computer Science assistant professor and chief technology officer/co-founder of Coho Data Andrew Warfield has been named as one of Forty Under 40 by Business in Vancouver magazine. Coho Data has received $25 million in additional funding and will be doubling the size of its engineering team over the next year. Warfield is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and holds a Canada Research Chair in Computer Systems and Security. Prior to coming to UBC, he was one of the original developers of the Xen Virtual Machine Monitor at XenSource before it was acquired by Citrix. For more info, click here.
UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) has placed as the top Canadian planning institution based on a preliminary analysis of citation activity. The preliminary analysis, conducted by Professor Thomas Sanchez of the College of Architecture at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs, determined the top 25 planning schools in North America by the average number of Google Scholar citations per faculty member.
UBC placed seventh with 1,763 citations. Professors Lawrence Frank, William Rees, and Leonie Sandercock were listed amongst the top 50 cited planning faculty. For more information, click here.
Research by Faculty of Medicine professor Dr. Carolyn Gotay and the Cancer Prevention Centre team on mapping the obesity problem in Canada was named one of the top research stories of 2013 by the Canadian Cancer Society. Gotay updated the maps, showing that obesity rates have climbed in the last 11 years, providing the evidence needed to promote action from the public, healthcare providers, and decision-makers to improve the health of Canadians. It is estimated that diet, obesity, and lack of exercise are responsible for about one-third of all cancers. For more information, click here.
Colin Gay, UBC’s lead researcher on the ATLAS project – one of two large detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN responsible for discovering the Higgs boson – has been named head of UBC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. A leading expert in experimental subatomic and energy frontier physics, Gay will assume the role effective January 1, 2014 for a five-year term. For more information, click here.
UBC immunologist Pauline Johnson has been recognized with a 2013 Community Leadership and Excellence Award by the Minerva Foundation for B.C. Women, a non-profit dedicated to promoting women and leadership in the province. Johnson is only the second tenured female professor in the history of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC. Her research focuses on the connection between infection, inflammation and immunity. For more information, click here.
The new S-FRAME Software Laboratory opened on UBC’s Okanagan campus on December 12 in the Engineering, Management and Education building. S-FRAME Software Inc. provided a donation of structural engineering software, software upgrades, maintenance and technical support valued at more than $690,000. For more information, click here.
Nursing Associate Professor Bernie Garrett has been elected as the North American representative to the International Organization for Science and Technology Education (IOSTE). The IOSTE was established in 1979 to advance education in science and technology and provide scholarly exchange and discussion. For more info, click here.
UBC Library is part of a collaboration that has been awarded a 2013 Cataloguing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant worth $183,500 to support the project “Discovering Modern China: University of Washington and UBC Collections.” This project is one of the 22 selected from a total of 75 applications and is one of only two international collaborative projects funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). More information is available at the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) News blog.
Tsawwassen First Nation and the Upper St’át’imc Language, Culture, and Education Society are the inaugural recipients of the Aboriginal Audio Digitization and Preservation Program (AADPP). The AADPP, a pilot initiative led by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, provides grants for B.C. Aboriginal organizations to convert audio cassette tapes to digital formats for preservation and access. Current plans are to offer equipment, training and funding support for up to six projects per year, with applications accepted twice a year. Visit the Indigitization site for more information.
The University Women’s Club of Vancouver, in collaboration with UBC School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), present the 2014 Dialogues on our City’s Future. The event is moderated by Penny Gurstein, Director of SCARP.
Date: Jan. 21, Feb. 4, Feb. 18, March 4, March 18
Time: Tuesdays, 7 – 9:30 p.m.
Place: Hycroft House, 1489 McRae Avenue
Info: Register by phone (604)731- 4661 or online
