UBC This Week | Dec. 7, 2006

UBC This Week is a weekly summary of UBC people in the news, recent media releases and upcoming event highlights. UBC This Week past issues are also available on-line.

Sign up for UBC This Week and other UBC Public Affairs e-mail services at www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/eservices.

Recent UBC Media Releases

• Dec. 7: UBC nets $8.2 million for research brain gains
• Dec. 4: UBC receives $7 million to study the evolution of microbial diversity

Upcoming Event Highlights

• Dec. 8: Borealis String Quartet with David Harding & Eric Wilson
• Dec. 12: Public Open House: Henry Angus Building renovations
• Dec. 13: Members Day at the UBC Botanical Garden
• Dec. 14-17: UBC Opera Ensemble - Gilbert & Sullivan: The Gondoliers

Find out what else is happening at UBC this week. For sports events, visit the UBC Athletics site at www.gothunderbirds.ca/schedule.asp.

UBC People

• UBC faculty members named AAAS Fellows
• UBC professor awarded first annual Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration
• UBC Botanical Garden Christmas tree chipper event
• Holiday fun – UBC’s own Free Hugs camp

UBC People

UBC faculty members named AAAS Fellows

Two UBC faculty members have been elected as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in recognition of their contributions to science and technology.

Prof. Janet Werker is a developmental psychologist and Canada Research Chair in Psychology. She has gained international recognition for her research examining the infant development processes and the emergence of language.

A microbiologist at the Michael Smith Laboratories, Prof. James Kronstad is a fungal biologist whose expertise includes pathogenesis, morphogenesis, and infection-specific gene expression.

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UBC professor awarded first annual Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration

UBC Department of Language and Literacy Education Prof. John Willinsky has received a $50,000 award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for his Public Knowledge Project (PKP). An initiative supporting open source tools for scholarly communications, the PKP project was recognized for its potential in creating academic disciplines and publications in developing countries. The Faculty of Education will use the award to conduct a series of workshops, surveys and other activities aimed at paving the way for adoption of the PKP open source tools by Latin American academics.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a philanthropic organization that honours the leadership and collaborative development of open source software tools that can be applied to higher education and not-for-profit activities. Willinsky is one of ten recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's first annual awards.

The awards were presented by the Coalition for Networked Information by Sir Timothy
Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and the inventor of the World Wide Web. For more information, visit: http://pkp.sfu.ca

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UBC Botanical Garden Christmas tree chipper event

Join the sustainability wave and bring your clean, undecorated Christmas tree to the UBC Botanical Garden to be chipped into bark mulch for garden pathways. Drop your tree off between Jan. 2-5, 2007 from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. or Jan. 6-7, 2007 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Garden staff will be on hand January 6, 2007 with hot apple cider from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. All other dates and times will be self-serve drop-off. No yard trimmings please. UBC Plant Operations and UBC Botanical Garden proudly sponsor this sustainability initiative.

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Holiday fun – UBC’s own Free Hugs camp

Need a break from the winter doldrums? Try these on for a little fun. YouTube resurrected the “Free Hugs” campaign and UBC responded with its own “Free Hugs” version starring residents and advisors from Korea-UBC House.

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