Dr. Michael Petrides has been inducted into a most illustrious pantheon, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in recognition of his groundbreaking research on working memory. Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Dr. Petrides is one of only three Canadians among the 227-year-old academy's 227 inductees for this year.
His fellow 2007 inductees include former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and winners of Nobel and Academy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, not to mention another McGillian, alumna Renée Baillargeon (BArts '75) who is now Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Dr. Petrides, a leading expert in the field of cognitive neuroscience, holds appointments in the McGill Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery as well as Psychology and is an MNI Killam Scholar. He will be formally inducted into the academy at its annual ceremony on October 6 at its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Magalie Dion, an undergraduate in agricultural and environmental sciences at McGill, has received the Excelle Science prize, awarded by Quebec's ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation (MAPAQ) to an oustanding female university student studying in the traditionally male-dominated field of agriculture and food studies. The prize, which comes with a $2,000 bursary, was announced by MAPAQ minister Laurent Lessard in early May as part of the provincial government's Chapeau, les filles! recognition program.
Four McGill alumni have made this year's Globe and Mail "Top 40 Under 40" list, a who's who of outstanding young Canadians in business, science, medicine, advocacy and other influential fields: Eric Boyko (BCom 92), co-founder of eFundraising.com, an online distributor of fundraising products and services based in Montreal; Kenneth Brooks (BCom 91), partner and senior vice president of Ernst & Young Orenda Corporate Finance Inc. in Montreal; John Chambers (MBA 92), Managing Director and President of the Calgary-based investment banking firm FirstEnergy Capital Corp; and Isabelle Marcoux (BA 91, BCL 95), vice-president of corporate development at Canada's largest printing company, Transcontinental Inc., here in Montreal. Drawn from an initial list of 1,200 to 1,400 nominations from across Canada, honorees were chosen based on five criteria: vision and leadership; innovation and achievement; impact; growth/development strategy; and community involvement.
A recent accolade confirms that the Web as woven by McGill is not tangled, but pristine. The university's Web site has been awarded a silver medal by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in its 2007 Complete Institutional Web Sites competition.
The honour follows a thorough redesign of www.mcgill.ca courtesy of Web Service Group Manager Karl Jarosiewicz and many dedicated collaborators—including WSG team members Ed Bilodeau, Stéphane Daury, Konstantin Ryabitsev and Eric Smith as well as Director of Special Projects in McGill's Office of Communications Susan Murley. The overhauled site, which was launched in August, was one of 41 entries in its CASE category, of which two received silver medals and one received a bronze. CASE is a non-profit association that encompasses 3,300 colleges, universities, elementary and secondary schools in 54 countries.
Headway, the bi-annual magazine that highlights research, discovery and innovation at McGill, has made some remarkable progress of its own. In only its second year of existence, Headway has become the gold standard for publications of its kind, capturing the 2007 Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) gold medal in the Best Magazine Category of its Prix d'Excellence awards program. Editors Mark Reynolds and James Martin and consulting editors Susan Murley and Jennifer Towell deserve a rousing round of applause.
So, too, does the McGill Reporter's own Neale McDevitt, who captured a silver medal in the Best Article (English Language) category of the Prix D'Excellence with his vivid and arresting portrait of McGill's competitive woodsmen team, "A Cut Above the Rest," which appeared in our February 9, 2006 issue. The awards will be presented at the CCAE's annual conference, to be held June 2-5 in Charlottetown.