Two events celebrate recent success and future promise
By McGill Reporter staff
You can’t quite call it a song-and-dance routine, but there was prize-winning music in the air and many eyes were dancing over displays of spectacular McGill research at the Feb. 10 Bravo 2009 soirée at the Montreal Science Centre.
Bravo 2009 was both a tribute to the University’s major prize and award winners of 2008 and a showcase for 24 current, groundbreaking research projects. Members of the McGill research community and invited guests were able to explore and examine projects from every McGill faculty and meet the investigators behind them.
Outlining the accomplishments of the University’s many award-winning researchers, Bravo’s host, Denis Thérien, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations), got a laugh from the audience when he said, only half in jest, “Face it, we’re all better people for hanging around these talented people.”
The evening featured a musical performance by the Schulich Golden Violin trio, composed of the winners of the past three Golden Violin Awards. It was followed by the announcement of Chloé Dominguez as the 2008 Golden Violin Award winner.
The evening wrapped up with a keynote address delivered by Marc LePage, Consul General of Canada for San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.
Two days later, the 24 research displays moved to Redpath Hall, where they were the featured attractions of the first-ever Excellence in Research Exhibition. Nearly 600 members of the McGill community, the general public and Montreal-area CEGEP and high-school students turned out for the event.
The event was designed to stimulate interest in research by demystifying it and making it accessible to all, and judging by the turnout and the reaction of visitors to the Exhibition, it succeeded brilliantly.
“Overhearing high school students telling their friends ‘you have to come see the Management display,’ or ‘you won’t believe what they are doing in Engineering,’ was very gratifying,” said Jacquie Rourke, Communications Officer for Thérien, and organizer of both Bravo and the Research Exhibition. “Our goal was to share the excitement and relevance of McGill research with our own community and the general public. The response makes it clear that people are very interested in what our researchers are doing. It’s a win-win situation.”
Brad Moffat, a physics teacher from Selwyn House who accompanied 14 of his school’s Honours students to the event, said the members of his party were captivated by both the actual research projects and the researchers and graduate students they met at the various display tables.
“Most of them enjoyed seeing and holding the 4.2 billion-year-old rocks, and some liked the cold welding demo,” he said. “They all found the content interesting, but many were just as enthusiastic about meeting the people who were involved.”
Indeed, it is the quality of researchers at McGill that makes events such as Bravo and the Excellence in Research Exhibition possible in the first place.
“McGill has attracted exceptional people to our University. The talent pool exceeds traditional definitions of excellence, as seen by our list of prizewinners and featured researchers,” Thérien said. “Our excellence is world-class, and we need to reach out to our partners, funding agencies, governments, the private sector, and our students of the future to show them why McGill is so exceptional.”
Bravo 2009 Major Prize & Award Winners
ACFAS Awards
Robin Yates – Prix André-Laurendeau (East Asian Studies)
Michael Kramer – Prix Léo-Pariseau (Pediatrics)
Canadian Medical Hall of Fame
Ronald Melzack (Psychology)
CBIE
Claudia Mitchell – Innovation in International Education (Education)
International Courts and Tribunals Program – Outstanding Program Award (Law)
Gairdner International Award
Nahum Sonenberg (Biochemistry)
Killam Fellowship
Stephen A. Smith (Law)
Henri Darmon (Mathematics and Statistics)
Kyoto Prize
Charles Taylor (Philosophy)
NSERC Synergy Award
James Finch (Mining and Materials Engineering)
Ordre National du Québec
Nicholas Mateesco Matte (Law)
Pavel Hamet (Experimental Medicine)
Sheila Goldbloom (School of Social Work)
Prix du Québec
Paul-André Crépeau – Prix Georges-Émile-Lapalme (Law)
Jean-Marie Dufour – Prix Léon-Gérin (Economics)
Philippe Gros – Prix Wilder-Penfield (Biochemistry)
Royal Society of Canada Medals
Anthony Williams-Jones (Bancroft Award in Geology)
Henri Darmon (John L. Synge Award in Mathematical Sciences)
Royal Society of Canada Fellowships
Pengfei Guan (Mathematics and Statistics)
Wagdi Habashi (Mechanical Engineering)
Nicholas Kasirer (Law)
Victoria Kaspi (Astrophysics)
Alfonso Mucci (Earth & Planetary Sciences)
Peter Sabor (English)
Research on the cutting edge
The 24 research projects listed below were on display at the first ever Excellence in Research Exhibition held at Redpath Hall Thursday, Feb. 12.
Ellen B. Aitken, Victor Hori, and Torrance Kirby – Faculty of Religious Studies
Religions in Contexts of Cultural Change: East and West
Ulf Bockenholt – Desautels Faculty of Management
Being Nice or Being Honest: How to Get More Truthful Surveys
Timothy Brewer – Faculty of Medicine
Preventing & Controlling Epidemics: Public Health in an Inter-Connected World
Alain Brunet and Karim Nader – Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science
Can We Erase Memories to Cure People?
Catherine Bushnell – Faculty of Dentistry and Faculty of Medicine
Chronic Pain Changes the Brain
Sylvain Coulombe and Richard L. Leask – Faculty of Engineering
Electrical Plasma – A New Tool in Local Gene Transfer
Alain Dagher – Faculty of Medicine, MNI
Food Addiction: How the Brain Controls Appetite
Mourad El-Gamal – Faculty of Engineering
The Infinite Possibilities of the Infinitely Small
Don Francis and Jonathan O’Neil – Faculty of Science
The Oldest Rocks in the World
Guillaume Gervais – Faculty of Science
Reinventing Electronics with Quantum Physics
Andrew Gonzalez – Faculty of Science
Climate Change-Driven Extinctions and Impacts in Northern Quebec
Murray M. Humphries – Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Environment, Wildlife, & People: Understanding the Changing Face of Canada’s North
Sarah Kimmins – Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
How the Environment Alters Sperm and Male Reproductive Health
Desmond Manderson, Helge Dedek, Tina Piper, and Kirsten Anker – Faculty of Law
Through the Looking Glass: Art as the Mirror of Law
Claudia Mitchell and (the late) Jackie Kirk – Faculty of Education
Negotiating, Constructing and Re-Constructing Girlhood
Madhukar Pai – Faculty of Medicine
The McGill Tuberculosis Research Group: Uniting to Fight a Global Killer
Morag Park – Faculty of Medicine
Friends or Foes? Decoding Breast Tumor Microenvironments
Alain Pinsonneault – Desautels Faculty of Management
Second Life – How Real Is the Virtual World?
Janusz Rak – Faculty of Medicine
Unveiling Microvesicles – Triggers & Messengers of Cancer
Maya Saleh – Faculty of Medicine
Using Genomics to Decode and Cure Infectious Disease
Nico Trocmé – Faculty of Arts
Understanding and Improving Services for Abused and Neglected Children
Jon Wild – Schulich School of Music
A Vanished Renaissance Scale – Reviving the 31-Note Octave
Paul Yachnin – Faculty of Arts
Making Publics: Media, Markets & Association in Early Modern
Stephen Yue – Faculty of Engineering
Cold Spray – Hot Stuff in Aerospace Materials Engineering