Kudos
Professor Daniel Schoen from the Department of Biology has earned a Killam Research Fellowship from the Canada Council for the Arts. The fellowships allow some of Canada's best scientists and scholars to devote up to two years to full-time research and writing. The subject of Schoen's fellowship is "Deleterious Mutation in Plants."
Five law students have been selected to be clerks for Supreme Court justices for the 2002-2003 year. François Tanguay-Renaud will clerk for Justice L'Heureux-Dubé, Robert Leckey will clerk for Justice Bastarache, Eric Ward will clerk for Justice Iacobucci, Alana Klein will clerk for Justice Arbour, and Pierre-Hughes Verdier will clerk for Justice Gonthier.
Professor Charles Leblond from the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology has been named a "grand officier" of the Ordre national du Québec. Among Leblond's contributions to medical science is the development of radioautography in 1945, a process that involves injecting radioactive material into organisms and using these "tracers" to study where and how cellular and molecular processes take place.
Professor Bruce Trigger from the Department of Anthropology, an internationally recognized authority on aboriginal societies in Canada and ancient civilizations, has been named an officer of the Ordre.
Dr. Maurice McGregor, an emeritus professor of medicine, a cardiologist at the McGill University Health Centre and a former dean of medicine at McGill, was named a chevalier of the Ordre.
Dr. Charles Scriver from the Departments of Pediatrics and Human Genetics was recently inducted into the Académie des Grands Montréalais. Scriver was involved in the inception of the Human Genome Project and the addition of vitamin D to Canadian milk is the direct result of his study of the prevalence of rickets in Quebec children. He recently donated a copy of The Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease, a comprehensive and widely used textbook he served as senior editor for, to the Faculty of Medicine.
Emeritus professor of communications Gertrude Joch Robinson and neurology and neurosurgery professor Brenda Milner were recently named as Women of Distinction by the Montreal YWCA. Robinson was celebrated in the communications category for her landmark research in such areas as women working in newspapers and Canadian magazine coverage of women at work. Milner was the winner in the science and technology category for her pioneering insights on the specific parts of the brain that control memory, speech and perception.
Dr. Ronald Guttmann, emeritus professor of medicine and former director of the McGill University Centre for Clinical Immunobiology and Transplantation, was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Canadian Society of Transplantation at their annual meeting at Lake Louise on March 16, 2001, in recognition of his contributions to the field on a national and international level.
Professor Robert Carroll from the Department of Biology has won the Willet G. Miller Medal from the Royal Society of Canada for outstanding research in any branch of the earth sciences. According to the Royal Society's citation, Carroll "is probably the most distinguished vertebrate paleontologist of the present day."
Michel Lambert, a jazz drum instructor in the Faculty of Music, was part of a Juno Award-winning effort recently as a member of the François Carrier Trio + 1. The group appeared on three tracks of saxophonist François Carrier's CD Compassion, which recently won the Juno as Canada's "best contemporary jazz album."
For the third consecutive year, a team of McGill management students won the E-commerce Case Competition at the University of New Brunswick-Saint John. Richard Schwartz, Marek Ryfko, Andrew Morris, Brent Prowse and Emmanuel Castiel represented McGill. Each team offered a plan to position New Brunswick as a national leader in innovation and technology. The McGill team suggested the creation of a new provincial agency that would offer electronic services ranging from e-learning to online polls to online procurement and payments. First prize was worth $10,000 and McGill bested seven other universities.
Professor Mark Sutton from the Department of Physics has won the Brockhouse Medal for outstanding contributions to condensed matter and materials physics from the Canadian Association of Physicists. Sutton was fêted for playing a leading role in the development of an important new X-ray technique called X-ray Intensity Fluctuation Spectroscopy (XIFS) and its application to measuring the dynamics of materials on the nanometer length scale.
Economics student Daniel Rosen won the $500 first prize in the undergraduate essay contest of the Progressive Economics Forum, which met at McGill last week with the Canadian Economics Association. His topic was "The Free Market Fails Children: A Discussion of Market Failure and Possible Correctives for the Canadian Child Care System."
Professor Yvan Lamonde from the Department of French Language and Literature has won the Marie Tremaine Medal from the Bibliographical Society of Canada for outstanding services to Canadian bibliography. Lamonde is currently playing a major role in a large-scale project examining the history of the book in Canada.
Randy Chevrier, a physical education student and a defensive lineman with the McGill Redmen football squad, was named McGill's male athlete of the year. Chevrier had 48 tackles for the Redmen last season, was one of only two Canadians invited to take part in the East-West Shrine Bowl (an all-star game for college football players in the U.S.) and earned the Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union's J.P. Metras trophy as the country's most outstanding lineman.
Sarah Ali-Khan, a graduate student in pharmacology, has been named McGill's female athlete of the year for the second consecutive year. In six cross-country races, Ali-Khan won three gold medals, one silver and a bronze. She led McGill to a first-place finish at the Quebec championships and was voted Quebec conference athlete of the year in both cross-country and track and field. In track and field events, Ali-Khan won 10 gold medals and three silvers.
McGill received an award of appreciation from the West Montreal Readaptation Centre, recently awarded to the University by Quebec Lieutenant-Governor Lise Thibault. The award recognized the efforts made by McGill staff in helping individuals with intellectual disabilities in a work experience program involving several McGill departments.
Kim St-Pierre sparked the Canadian women's hockey team to a gold medal at the women's world hockey championships. St-Pierre was named the tournament's top goalie. She was also named MVP of the McGill Martlets after leading the team to an unexpected bronze medal at the Canadian university women's hockey championships.
The women's rugby team won the Martlet Foundation Trophy as the intercollegiate team that brought most credit to the University through its athletic achievements. The Martlets set school records for wins and points, outscoring opponents by a whopping 599-44 margin. They became Quebec champions and finished second overall in Canada.
Two graduate students from the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition were among the five finalists in the American Society of Clinical Nutrition Graduate Student Competition recently. They were selected to make presentations about their work at the organization's experimental biology conference. Christine Bourque discussed "Influence of an oil containing medium chain triglycerides, phytosterols and n-3 fatty acids on plasma lipid levels in overweight women," a paper co-authored with Professor Peter Jones and M.P. St-Onge. Michelle Mackenzie won the top prize for her presentation on "Acute phase response compromises muscle protein synthesis in piglets with protein energy malnutrition," co-written with M. Warren and Professor Linda Wykes.
James Demetrios Kanaris, a doctoral student in the Faculty of Religious Studies, has earned the K.B. Jenckes Prize awarded to the most outstanding McGill graduate student in the social sciences and humanities. Kanaris's research on Bernard Lonergan's philosophy of religion earned glowing reviews and his abilities as a teacher and as the general editor of the faculty's journal, ARC, also drew praise. Professor Maurice Boutin was his PhD supervisor.
Annual fund officer Alexya Heelis and senior communications officer Vivian Lewin from Development and Alumni Relations and designer Mark Silverstone (formerly of the Instructional Communications Centre) have won a gold medal from the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) for "best brochure" for "Invitation to Leadership Donors," a brochure created as a comprehensive information piece for potential donors contemplating gifts of $500 or more. CCAE judges described the brochure as "classically hip."
The McGill News has won a silver medal for "best writing (French)" from the CCAE for an article on the resurgence of student activism. The award is shared by freelance translator Carl Lavoie and McGill Reporter editor Daniel McCabe. The story originally appeared in English in the Reporter. The News also earned the CCAE's gold medal as the best university magazine in Canada.
Managing editor Karl Jarosiewicz, web systems designer Eric Smith and webmaster Christopher Murtagh from the Web Communications Group have won the Quebec regional prize in the Canadian Association of University Business Officers Quality and Productivity Awards. The awards recognize innovative work that is both exceptional and cost effective. The WCG won for its WCG Web Publishing System, a database-driven web publication system that streamlines the process of producing, updating and maintaining web pages for the whole University community. The software generates complex pages with sophisticated programming, while allowing content owners from all official University units to edit text on their own web pages.
Louis Houle, head of interlibrary loans and document delivery for the Libraries, earned an honourable mention in the same competition for overseeing a new Subsidized UnMediated Ordering (SUMO) service: the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) Source/SUMO service. It's a one-stop-shopping service where the patrons (faculty, staff and graduate students) can browse the CISTI Source Table of Contents database over the web, order articles and receive them directly on their desktop.
Associate Vice-Principal (Research) Ian Butler was recently selected by the Quebec government to serve as the president of the jury that will choose the 2001 winner of the Prix du Québec's Prix Lionel-Boulet for outstanding research done in the industrial sector.
Professor Henry Mintzberg from the Faculty of Management, a celebrated skeptic of strategic planning and the author of several influential business books, was recently awarded an honorary degree by Concordia University.
Adjunct professor Allen Patenaude from the Faculty of Education was awarded the Médaille de l'Assemblée Nationale for longstanding meritorious service to the anglophone educational community.
Dr. Dora Sakayan, professor post-retirement, Department of German Studies, will be awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany later this month for her contribution to the research on and teaching of the German language and culture both in the former Soviet Union -- particularly in Armenia -- and, since 1975, at McGill.
Mary Gauthier won this year's Faculty of Science Excellence Award, granted to a non-academic for enhancing the smooth running of the faculty both for staff and students. Gauthier is undergraduate program secretary in the Department of Psychology, whose work includes processing the annual requests for information of about 1,000 students and keeping the department's web pages up to date. Wrote one faculty member in a letter of support: "She is simply relentless in her willing, warm and efficient manner."
