UBC This Week | Sep. 27, 2007

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

• Sep. 27: A World Without MS: Renowned Researcher Brings New Vision to Multiple Sclerosis Program at Vancouver Coastal Health and UBC
• Sep. 20: First-Year Med Students Doubled, Nursing Spaces Up 82%

Upcoming Event Highlights

• Sep. 27: "What is Asian Canadian Cultural Activism?" : Panel Discussion and Book Launch
• Sep. 28: UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble
• Sep. 28: Ki-Ke-in (Ron Hamilton): We Can All Dance and Have Fun!
• Sep. 28-29: Men's and women's ice hockey at Winter Sports Centre
• Sep. 29: Men's football v. Saskatchewan at Thunderbird Stadium
• Oct. 1-5: UBC Visual Art Faculty Exhibit
• Oct. 2: John Steffler Poet Laureate Reads
• Oct. 3: UBC Sustainability Fair

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 engineer wins research and development prize
• UBC professor to lecture in New Zealand
• Three UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering professors honoured
• UBC professor appointed Scientific Director
• UBC graduate’s film takes to the skies
• MFA Thesis feature film to have world premiere in Vancouver 
• UBC School of Nursing professors receive high honours
• BCNET honours UBC staff
• Harbour Air joins with Offsetters to become carbon neutral
• Live well, work well next week
• UBC’s Sustainability Fair hopes to inspire campus community
• UBC Theatre’s Dream ends Saturday
• Visiting artist brings indigenous art to UBC
• Visiting scholar to speak on public memory practice

UBC People

UBC engineer wins research and development prize

Prof. Emeritus Alec Mitchell, Department of Materials Engineering, has received the 2007 Research and Development Prize from the Japan Titanium Society (JTS) for his contributions to the development and production of titanium alloys.

Founded in 1952, JTS aims to expand the uses of titanium at an economical cost.

For more information, visit www.titan-japan.com.

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UBC professor to lecture in New Zealand

Prof. Clarence de Silva, Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been selected as a Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury. Each year, some 70 international academic experts in the Faculties of Commerce, Engineering or Science are invited to the university for one to three months to give lectures in their areas of expertise. De Silva will lecture on intelligent control of robots and industrial processes.

For more info, visit www.canterbury.ac.nz/erskine/viserskinefellows.shtml.

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Three UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering professors honoured

Prof. Emeritus Ian Cumming has received the Career Recognition Award for his presentation Perspectives on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Processing at the 2007 Advanced SAR Workshop, organized biennially by the Canadian Space Agency to review the progress of SAR technology.

Prof. Emeritus Mabo Ito has been appointed to the Board of Directors of Engineers Canada, the national organization that regulates engineering in Canada and licenses the country's more than 160,000 professional engineers.

Assoc. Prof. Steve Wilton, along with Imperial College colleagues Chun Ho, Chi Wai Yu, Philip Leong and Wayne Luk, have received the Best Paper Award at the 2007 International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications for their paper Domain-Specific Hybrid FPGA: Architecture and Floating Point Applications.

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UBC professor appointed Scientific Director

School of Nursing Professor and Assoc. Director, Graduate Programs and Research, Dr. Joy Johnson has been appointed the new Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Gender and Health, effective Jan. 1, 2008. Johnson’s research focuses on health promotion and health behaviour change, with a major focus on sex and gender issues in substance use.

For more information, visit www.cihr.ca/e/34984.html.

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UBC graduate’s film takes to the skies

UBC Film Production alumna Carmen Forsberg’s short documentary Q’Oyllur Ritti – God of the Snow Mountain has been selected as part of Air Canada’s enRoute Student Film Festival. The six minute film documents Forsberg’s journey in her native Peru as she goes on pilgrimage to the glacier Señor de Q’Oyllur Ritti, already irrevocably changed due to the effects of global warming. The film will be shown worldwide throughout the month of September.

For more information and to view the film, visit www.enroutemag.com/film.

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MFA Thesis feature film to have world premiere in Vancouver 

Gwen Haworth’s MFA thesis film, She’s A Boy I Knew, will have its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival on Oct. 4 and 9. Using archival family footage, family interviews, phone messages and hand-drawn animation, Haworth’s documentary chronicles Steven Haworth’s decision to come out to his family about his life-long female gender identity and the journey to becoming Gwen Haworth. 

The Vancouver Film Festival takes place from today through Oct. 12. For more information, visit www.viff.org.

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UBC School of Nursing professors receive high honours 

Prof. Pam Ratner was inducted into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences this month.  Fellows of the Academy are elected on the basis of their demonstrated leadership, creativity, distinctive competencies and commitment to advance academic health sciences. 

For more information, visit www.cahs-acss.ca.

Assist. Prof. Lynda Balneaves received $1 million in funding over four years from the Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation for her project Complementary Medicine Education and Outcomes Program. The aim of this program is to support people living with cancer in making decisions around complimentary medicine (CAM); to facilitate new CAM research; and to strengthen health professionals' knowledge and decision support skills.

For more information, visit www.hecht.org/index.htm.

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BCNET honours UBC staff

Michelle Lamberson, Director of UBC’s Office of Learning Technology, received the BCNET Faculty Recognition Award for her work with information technology to enhance the academic experience for students, staff and faculty. Douglas Wade, Network Operations Analyst at BCNET and UBC, received a BCNET Staff Recognition Award for his work of over two decades.

BCNET builds high-performance networks for B.C.’s research and higher education institutes. For more information, visit www.bc.net. 

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Harbour Air joins with Offsetters to become carbon neutral

Offsetters Climate Neutral Society, founded in 2005 by Assist. Prof. James Tansey, Centre for Applied Ethics and the Sauder School of Business, and Prof. Hadi Dowlatabadi, Liu Institute for Global Studies and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, has clinched a deal with Harbour Air Ltd.

Harbour Air, the world’s largest all-seaplane airline, has pledged to be the first air carrier of any variety in North America and the only seaplane airline in the world to become completely carbon neutral by the end of 2007. Effective Oct. 1, Harbour Air will purchase carbon offsets to mitigate the climate impact of all operations from Offsetters.

Offsetters.ca works with individuals and businesses to calculate, track, reduce and offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

For more information, visit www.offsetters.ca and www.harbour-air.com/home/index.php?id=75&PHPSESSID=c9e92a53c727155ed7907e1ccd9c54fe.

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Live well, work well next week

UBC’s fifth annual Health Symposium, themed Live Well, Work Well, will be held at the Chan Centre from 7:30 a.m.- 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 3. Complimentary to all UBC faculty and staff, the day includes speakers, breakout sessions and a Health Fair.

For more information, visit www.hse.ubc.ca/health-symposium.

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UBC’s Sustainability Fair hopes to inspire campus community

UBC’s Sustainability Office will hold a Sustainability Fair on Oct. 3 from 11:30 a.m. - 3:30 on the South Plaza of the Student Union Building. Campus sustainability tours, live music, local food, booths, exhibits and a film festival will be available to inspire the campus community to sustainability.

For more information, visit www.sustain.ubc.ca/events.html.

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UBC Theatre’s Dream ends Saturday

Theatre at UBC’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Assoc. Prof. Steven Heatley, Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing and with original music by Adj. Prof. Patrick Pennefather, runs to Sept. 29 at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre.

Tickets are $20/$14/$12 at the Box Office: 604-822-2678. Visit the show site at www.theatre.ubc.ca/midsummer_dream/index.shtml. 

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Visiting artist brings indigenous art to UBC

Ki-Ke-in (Ron Hamilton) will present his handmade masks on Sept. 28 from 12 - 2 p.m. at UBC’s First Nations Longhouse, followed by a puppet mask making workshop on Sept. 29 and 30 from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Ki-Ke-in first showed his masks at a potlatch in 2002 where he invited anyone who felt the loss of language or culture to dance with one of the puppet masks. Many participants shared how the performance freed them from externally imposed cultural illiteracy. Ki-Ke-in will present a selection of the original masks.

Workshop participation is limited to 24 participants, with preference given to Aboriginal students. To register, contact Alannah Young at aeyoung@interchange.ubc.ca.

These events are part of the First Nation’s House of Learning’s Exploring Indigenous Identity Series, supported by the Equity Enhancement Fund. For more information, visit www.longhouse.ubc.ca/events.htm.

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Visiting scholar to speak on public memory practice

UBC’s Centre for India and South Asia Research and the Department of Asian Studies will host a lecture from James Hegarty, visiting lecturer in Indian Religions from Cardiff University, Wales. The lecture is entitled South Asian Epic as Public Memory Practice: The Production and Reproduction of the Significant Past in the Sanskrit and Doordarshan Mahābhāratas.  

The lecture will take place on Sept. 28 from 3 - 4:30 p.m., followed by a reception. For more information, visit www.iar.ubc.ca/bulletin/seminarsSEPT2007.htm.

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