UBC This Week – 26-Mar-2015

 

Recent UBC Media Releases

Mar 20 Get over it! UBC students, community gather to Storm the Wall

Upcoming Event Highlights

Mar 26 Book Launch “Unlocking The World: Education in an Ethic of Hospitality” By Dr. Claudia Ruitenberg
Mar 27 UBC Intercultural Fair at the UBC Bookstore
Mar 27 Spatial Politics and the City Symposium
Mar 28  Earth Hour UBC — Presented by Common Energy
Mar 29  Building Confidence and Resilience (for Women)
 Mar 30  Fixing China’s “Airpocalypse”: Roundtable Discussion on Under The Dome
Mar 31  Job Search Strategies Workshop
 Mar 31  The Culture and Traditions of Turkish and Greek Cuisine
Apr 1  When Science Fiction Was the Avant-garde: HG Wells & the Power of Extreme Experience
Apr 1  Contingency in Ecology
Apr 2  Patrick Ochieng: A Journey in Extractives Activism in Kenya and Beyond
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

UBC alumna named one of 30 Under 30 by B.C. Business

Former graduate student of biomedical engineering Marianne Black has been named one of B.C. Business’s 30 Under 30 for 2015. Black co-founded Arbutus Medical Inc., a company that makes surgical drill covers for typical hardware-store drills that can be properly sanitized. Black began the project during her master’s at UBC and has deployed the drill cover to hospitals in Uganda where nearly 2,000 patients have been treated using this technology. The covers are now employed in seven countries where expensive surgical drills are far and few between, with Syria recently added.

Black is now doing her PhD in mechanical engineering at Stanford University and she remains active in Arbutus Medical Inc.  She plans to help the company expand further into Africa and beyond and develop more medical devices for cash-strapped hospitals. More information here.

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Engineering professors honoured by the Engineering Institute of Canada

Two civil engineering professors have been inducted as Fellows of the Engineering Institute of Canada for their contributions to engineering in Canada.

Carlos Ventura, civil engineering professor and director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Facility, has been a faculty member in the Department of Civil Engineering since 1992. Ventura has authored more than 450 publications, and combines over 30 years of research to help protect Canadians from earthquakes. More information here.

Alex Sy has been an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil Engineering since 1995, and is Vice President, Technical at Klohn Crippen Berger. More information here.

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Traffic, Asthma and Genetics study featured as CIHR success story

The Traffic, Asthma and Genetics (TAG) study by Michael Brauer, professor at the School of Population and Public Health, and Christopher Carlsten, professor at the Respiratory Division at the Department of Medicine, along with Canadian and European collaborators, has been featured as one of Canada’s success stories by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Networks of Centres of Excellence. The study looked at genetic factors to help predict which children will develop traffic pollution-related asthma. More information here.

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Journalism graduate awarded ethics fellowship

Journalism alumna Katelyn Verstraten has been awarded a fellowship by Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), an innovative program that explores the history of the Holocaust as a way to engage graduate students across five different fields (business, journalism, law, medicine, and religion) in an intensive study of contemporary ethics in their discipline.

Verstraten, a freelance reporter living in Vancouver, is one of 12 journalism students and young journalists chosen by FASPE to participate in a two-week program that will take place this summer in Germany and Poland. More information here.

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UBC BEST takes on music therapy

Formed in 2012 by two students, the Biomedical Engineering Student Team (BEST) brings together students from across the university to tackle challenges in biomedical device design. BEST has recently worked with musical therapists on a device called Music to Movement, which provides musical feedback to patients who are in rehabilitation programs after a stroke. Musical feedback is used by occupational therapists to help the recovering brain map musical sounds to specific movements, like holding a cup or taking a step. BEST will enter the Music to Movement device in the 2015 BMEidea competition this April for a chance to win $10,000. More information here.

 

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Environmental design alumni win Robson Redux People’s Choice Award

A team of UBC environmental design alumni are the winners of the People’s Choice Award in Viva Vancouver’s 2015 Robson Redux competition. The installation “#icu” by Jeanie Lim, Jason Pielak, Grace Chang, Christine Chung and Samuel McFaul aims to be a catalyst for connection. Inspired by a periscope, #icu invites people to peer through windows in the installation to meet strangers, see a friend or watch a scene. More information here.

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EERI seismic design team competes in undergrad design competition

The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) seismic design team will participate at the 2015 Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition in Boston. More than thirty students have worked together to create a balsa wood scale model that will be placed under simulated gravity loads and earthquake loads. More information here.

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French ambassador gives public lecture on Sino-French diplomatic relations

A public lecture titled “50 years of French Diplomacy in China: What Did We Learn?will be given by newly appointed Ambassador of France to Canada, Nicolas Chapuis, at the Institute of Asian Research. Chapuis will provide the audience with insights and anecdotes on the history of relations between China and the West.

Members of the media are welcome. Meetings with the ambassador can be arranged at the conference. Please note that interviews can be conducted in Mandarin.

Date:    March 27, 2015
Time:    12:30 – 2 p.m.
Place:   Room 120, C.K. Choi Building, 1855 West Mall
Info:     Register here.  Light lunch provided.

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Climate Change: Science, Policy, and Politics

The community is invited to an afternoon of debates about the policies Canada needs to address climate change. This event marks the B.C. launch of the Sustainable Canada Dialogues. The Academics Panel (3 – 4:15) will be chaired by Sally Otto (Zoology) and include Simon Donner (Geography), Sally Aitken (Forestry), George Hoberg (Forestry) and Kathryn Harrison (Political Science). The Politicians Panel (4:30 – 6 p.m.) will be chaired by grad student Gordon Katic and include Scott Andrews (New Democratic Party candidate), Joyce Murray (MP, Vancouver-Quadra), Lynn Quarmby (Green Party) and a representative of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Date:    March 27, 2015,
Time:    3 – 6 p.m. Reception 6 – 7 p.m.
Info:     Click here.

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Music students compose and perform in Voice to Voice project

Students from UBC’s School of Music worked with Thursdays Writing Collective and Instruments of Change to create Voice to Voice, a project of 11 original compositions. The songs will be brought to life at two free premiere events by UBC singers and pianists. A book version of Voice to Voice including project text and score excerpts will be launched by Thursdays Writing Collective in June 2015.

  • April 2, 8 p.m.: Roy Barnett Recital Hall, UBC School of Music, 6361 Memorial Road
  • April 16, 8 p.m.: St. James Anglican Church, 303 E. Cordova Street

More information here.

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PhD student photo exhibition: Life Off Grid: Reassembling Domestic Life

Jonathan Taggart, writer-photographer and PhD student at UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, will give an exhibition titled Life Off Grid: Reassembling Domestic Life, part of the Capture Photography Festival.

From 2011 to 2013, Taggart and Phillip Vannini (Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Public Ethnography; professor at Royal Roads University’s School of Communication and Culture) travelled throughout Canada as part of a long-term ethnographic study of people living off the grid in every province and territory. ‘Life Off Grid’ presents photographs from these travels and interviews.

Date:    April 2
Time:    5 – 8 p.m.
Place:   Lobby Gallery, Liu Institute for Global Issues, 6476 NW Marine Drive
Info:     Liu Institute website

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Writing about First Nations

Three UBC Press authors will discuss their discoveries in research, how writing about First Nations people has changed over time, and the challenges and successes of the process. The authors are Jean Barman, author of French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest; Paige Raibmon, author of Written As I Remember It: Teachings from the Life of a Sliammon Elder; and Jennifer Kramer, author of Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas.

Date:    April 7
Time:    7 p.m. Place:   Book Warehouse, 4118 Main Street
Info:     http://books.bc.ca/read-local-bc/

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