UBC This Week 21-May-2015

UBC This Week subscriber:

Please be advised that May 28 will be the last edition of the UBC This Week newsletter.  If you work at UBC, visit the Working at UBC page on ubc.ca for the following information about the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses:

You can submit content to this page by completing this form.

For all the latest UBC news, including media releases by beat area, features, Q and As, opinions and more, visit http://news.ubc.ca/.

UBC Public Affairs

Recent UBC Media Releases

May 15  UBC Aboriginal MD program meets goal five years ahead of schedule
May 19  UBC students develop wearable device that monitors anxiety in autistic children
May 19  Graduation and honorary degree ceremonies begin
May 19  Zambian children report happiness levels on par with Canadian counterparts: UBC study
May 21 Canada building less social housing despite risk of increased homelessness: UBC study

Upcoming Event Highlights

May 22  Brown Bag Lunch with the Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education (CCPHE)
May 24  Whitecaps FC2 vs. Real Monarchs SLC
May 25  Pick Your Peak Stair Challenge 2015
May 26  Community-University Engagement: Who’s Teaching, Who’s Learning
May 26  Knowing the Land Beneath Our Feet: Integrating a digital Indigenous walking tour into UBC classrooms
May 26  Increasing Student Engagement through Open Educational Resources
May 26  The Secret, Social Lives of Bacteria
May 27  Robotics & Automation Technologies for Humanitarian Applications: where we are & where we can be
May 28  Cedar & Bamboo: film screening & discussion
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 student nabs international baseball title

Third-year electrical and computer engineering student Alex Webb has been named Pitcher of the Year in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics West division, a league of eight schools from B.C., Oregon, Idaho and California. The UBC Thunderbirds junior baseball pitcher finished the year with a 2.22 earned run average. Webb tallied 95 strikeouts and tied for the second most wins in the West Group with a 9-3 record. More information here.

to top

Computer science professors and postdoc receive ACM Best Paper Award

Computer science associate professors Giuseppe Carenini, Cristina Conati and postdoctoral research fellow Ben Steichen are the recipients of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS) Best Paper Award. Their article was selected for exemplifying research that bridges contributions in machine intelligence and interaction. More information here.

to top

Engineering student first to receive new memorial scholarship

Alexandra Dozzi, a third-year mechanical engineering student, is the inaugural recipient of the Marie Carter Memorial Undergraduate Engineering Scholarship awarded by the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation. The $5,000 award is given to an outstanding Canadian female student who is currently pursuing undergraduate studies in engineering. More information here.

to top

UBC offers first-ever online photonics course

UBC is offering the world’s first online course to include photonics fabrication, experimentation, and data analysis. Taught by electrical and computer engineering professor Lukas Chrostowski, students and industry professionals taking the course learn how to design integrated optical devices and circuits through a hands-on approach and get to build their own photonics chip. Online registration for the six-week online course has launched on edX. More information here.

to top

Engineering physics group qualifies as finalist

Fourth-year engineering physics students Alexander Toews, Darrick Lee and Elizabeth Wicks were selected as one of the six finalist groups in the Medical Device Development Centre Awards for Excellence in Biomedical Engineering Student Design and Innovation. Their project involved a way of applying a novel ultrasound method to assist surgeons when doing spinal surgery, specifically for spinal fixation procedures. More information here.

to top

Steel Bridge Team at the regionals

The UBC Steel Bridge Team participated in the regional competition at the American Society of Civil Engineers Pacific Northwest Regional Conference at Idaho State University. Teams were challenged in bridge construction speed, load-bearing ability, and bridge weight. The team’s bridge came to 5.6 metres in length, and was designed to bear a load of 1,090 kilograms. Next year, the team aims to resume their place at the regionals and to qualify for the national competition. More information here.

to top

Psychology graduate promotes science to Aboriginal students

New psychology graduate Ryan Tomm (BA ’15) has worked to promote science to Aboriginal students. He won an NSERC award to do summer research and shared his knowledge of the research process through workshops at the Indigenous Students Association at UBC.

The Aboriginal student also received an NSERC Aboriginal Ambassadors award in 2014 and used this funding to do outreach with Aboriginal teens. Tomm is accepted into the MA program in Behavioural Neuroscience and hopes to pursue a PhD. He plans to use his knowledge to help shape policies related to mental health in Aboriginal communities. More information here.

to top

Robotics and Automation Technologies for Humanitarian Applications

Faculty of Applied Science Associate Dean and Mechanical Engineering Professor Elizabeth Croft will be hosting a presentation given by Jonathan Ledgard, co-founder of research and technology transfer consortium Red Line at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. The talk is titled “A proposal to accelerate the development of cargo drones and droneports in order to save lives and build economies.” More information here.

to top