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Dr. Chris Barnes, project director of NEPTUNE Canada and Professor Emeritus in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree by the University of Waterloo last month. Barnes, who chaired Waterloo’s Department of Earth Sciences in the 1970s, was cited for his “distinguished career and effective and tireless advocacy for science and the earth sciences.”
Dr. Benedikt Fischer, the director of the Illicit Drug Policy and Public Health Unit at UVic’s Centre for Addictions Research of BC, has been named to the federal government’s recently created Mental Health Commission’s Science Advisory Committee. The creation of a mental health commission was a key recommendation of a 2006 report of the Standing Senate Committee. The report, entitled, “Out of the Shadows at Last: Transforming Mental Health, Mental Illness and Addiction Services in Canada,” outlined the need for a mental health commission in Canada to provide an ongoing national focus on mental health issues. The goal of the Mental Health Commission of Canada is to help bring into being an integrated mental health system that places people living with mental illness at its centre. For more information visit http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/.
Bill Gaston (writing) is the winner of the $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for Gargoyles, a collection of short stories. Founded in 2004, the Butler Book Prize is awarded each year to what’s deemed by a panel of three to be the best book by a Greater Victoria author published the year before. Gargoyles has already won a ReLit Award and been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Gaston is also the author of five novels, five collections of short fiction including Mount Appetite (nominated for the 2002 Giller Prize), a collection of poetry and a play. His work has been translated into several languages and his short fiction won a Canadian Literary Award for Fiction in 1999. In 2003 Gaston was awarded the inaugural Timothy Findley Award, for a Canadian male writer in mid-career.
Dr. Hubert King (mechanical engineering) is being honoured with a Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) silver medal issued by CIM’s Metallurgical Society, given to people who have built, sustained and developed CIM. A past director of the society, King has made significant research contributions on the effect of crystal structure and microstructure on the properties of a wide range of materials, published more than 100 papers in refereed scientific and engineering journals and made numerous contributions to conference proceedings. CIM has over 12,000 members and is the leading technical society of professionals in the Canadian minerals, metals, materials and energy industries.
Max Murray, a second-year music student, is taking his studies to Venice this month by attending a highly regarded interpretation course on the works of Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924–90). Although Nono’s music is arguably among the finest of the late 20th century, it is only now becoming more known in North America. Murray is the youngest participant selected to attend the workshop and one of very few from North America. He will be working with faculty who have played and recorded music under Nono’s direction. Last year Murray performed Post-prae-ludium per Donau per Tuba (In FA) e live electronics by Nono in a special concert at the School of Music. This was only the second time that this major work had been performed in Canada. For further details visit the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono website: http://www.luiginono.it/en/home.
Dr. Irving Rootman (human and social development) has been awarded fellowship in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, which recognizes the full breadth of academic health science ranging from fundamental science to social science and population health. Fellows elected to the academy are well-recognized by their peers for their contributions to the promotion of health science. Rootman came to UVic in 2002 and collaborated with the Centre for Community Health Promotion Research on campus. He has published widely in leading journals in the health promotion and drug abuse fields and has co-authored several books on health promotion. His main research interest is literacy and health. Rootman has been a pioneer in Canada and internationally in health promotion research and an architect of federal health policy aimed at promoting the health of all Canadians. He was the founding director for the first university-based centre for health promotion at the University of Toronto and holds a distinguished scholar award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.
Three UVic grad students have been awarded $20,000-a-year Pacific Leaders Graduate Fellowships from the provincial government to spend up to two years researching key issues affecting BC, after which they will join the BC public service. Geography master’s student Laura Joan Feyrer, currently manager of UVic’s whale research lab field station in Ahousat, is gathering data on habitat use by grey whales in order to to develop a habitat model to predict grey whale habitat use and help policy-makers understand factors contributing to coastal health and marine biodiversity. Habitat models based on her work will be used to identify sites for marine protected areas and assess the effects of future coastal development on other marine species. Biology master’s student Leon Gaber is investigating the use of insect nymphs and other freshwater invertebrates in the Salmon River watershed to measure the effects of agricultural pollution. He is also gauging the effectiveness of buffer zones between farms and streams and the potential for using stable isotopes to pinpoint the sources of water pollution. Geography PhD student Mark Seemann is conducting emergency management research focusing on community resilience to damaging earthquakes. An internationally certified emergency manager who has worked as an analyst for the BC Provincial Emergency Program, Seemann was involved in responding to the World Trade Centre disaster in 2001, the 2003 firestorm in central BC, and the 2004 avian flu outbreak in Abbotsford.
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