Accolades for the week of November 5
Concordia's research funding has increased by 7 per cent. While the university's ranking remains stable at the midway point (26 of 50) in the recently released Research InfoSource rankings, Concordia has seen an increase of 7 per cent in research revenues over the past year. Only three universities ranked higher than Concordia had larger increases to their funding, and most universities in the ranking saw a decrease in funding.
Congratulations to Fred Szabo, one of six recipients of the 2012 Wolfram Innovator Award which honours individuals who have made significant contributions to their fields through the innovative use of Wolfram technologies.
Szabo writes, "It is one of the most prestigious recognitions of my work that I could possibly get. I am in amazing company since Wolfram Research are the world leaders in computational and educational technology."
At the award ceremony in mid-October, the professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics gave a half-hour talk on "A New Kind of Learning," building on Stephen Wolfram's foundational work on "A New Kind of Science."
Nicole Gingras, an alumna (BFA 86) and part-time faculty member in Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts, has received the 2012 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art.
The $15,000, mid-career award recognizes the role Gingras has played at both the national and international levels in promoting awareness and understanding of experimental practices in photography, film, video and sound art. She has worked independently and with galleries, museums, artist-run centres and festivals as a curator, writer, programmer and filmmaker. She was recently appointed general and artistic director of La Biennale de Montréal 2013.
“Nicole Gingras’ active engagement with new art, her energy, and her intellectual rigour have enabled her to sustain a practice devoted mainly to new and relatively unexplored areas of contemporary art,” the jury noted. “As an independent curator, her practice is subject to many of the same risks and uncertainties as those of the artists she works with, while it demonstrates a versatility that has allowed her to use this fluid institutional context to great advantage.”
The award will be presented at a public gala on November 19 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Ehsan Derayati, a PhD student in Concordia's John Molson School of Business, was part of a multidisciplinary team that won the 2012 Medtech Excellence Scholarship award for a project titled "Low-cost microchip for point of care high sensitive assays." The project focused on the design, manufacturing and marketing of a low-cost chip used for rapid diagnosis of differential disease states. In addition to the health sector, the technology has applications in the food and environmental sectors. Derayati’s three teammates were engineering students from McGill University.
Jonathan Wener, deputy chancellor of Concordia University and alumnus, was named the 2012 recipient of the Fraser Institute's T. Patrick Boyle Founder's Award. The Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public policy think-tank, gives the award to recognize outstanding achievements in entrepreneurship, dedication to free and competitive markets, and philanthropic support for private-sector, non-profit enterprises. Read the full announcement.
Kudos to alumnus Tamas Dobozy, whose collection of short stories, Siege 13, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award (winners announced November 13) as well as the Rogers Writers’ Trust of Canada Fiction Prize (winners announced November 7).?