Accolades for the week of April 29

Suong Hoa, from Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and also the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Automated Composites Manufacturing, will be inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering. The ceremony takes place June 20 at the Delta Centre-Ville in Montreal. The Canadian Academy of Engineering bestows this honour on “distinguished engineers from all disciplines who have undertaken to serve the country and the profession in matters of broad concern.”

Marius Paraschivoiu has been award the C.N. Downing Award by the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineers (CSME) in recognition of his distinguished service to the society over many years. The award ceremony will be held on June 3 in Saskatoon. Paraschivoiu is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.
 

Two cinema alumnae, Chloé Robichaud and Fanny Malo, are heading to Cannes! Their film, Sarah préfère la course, tells the story of a young woman (Sophie Desmarais) who moves from rural Quebec to Montreal with her boyfriend to run on the McGill track team. But big-city life and her passion for the sport put pressure on their relationship. It will be screened in the Un certain regard ! ?section of the famed film fest, which runs from May 15 to 26, 2013. This is the pair’s first feature to make it to Cannes. Their first Cannes appearance was last year for the short Chef de meute.

Watch for Sarah préfère la course in Quebec theatres June 7.
 

Concordia University is featured in OnlineColleges.com’s infographic "The College Student’s Subsistence Diet." It addresses the importance of Wi-Fi on university campuses, and highlights Concordia University as an example of an innovator in new Internet technology adoption.  
 

Jean Pierre Desrosiers, a member of Concordia’s Board of Governors, will receive the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts. The award is a companion award to the Governor General’s Awards and is given to an individual or group to recognize outstanding contribution in voluntary service to Canada’s performing arts. A gala honouring all the recipients will be held in May at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
 

Mark Ellenbogen, Canada Research Chair, associate professor of psychology and member of the Centre for Research in Human Development, has been awarded a grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation in the U.S. to start a “pilot project to examine whether an early intervention in families having a parent with bipolar disorder will ameliorate negative behavioural outcomes in these high-risk offspring.” Ellenbogen was selected from some 500 applicants to receive up to $100,000 over two years in NARSAD* Independent Investigator Grants.

The project will include collaborations with McGill and Université de Montreal researchers. From Concordia, Lisa Serbin in psychology will be involved.

* NARSAD stands for National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the former name of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation 

Diane Poulin-Dubois has been inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Fellow status is awarded to APS members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application. Exceptionally, the Fellows Committee elected Poulin-Dubois through a nomination. 
 

Ayaz Naseem will be travelling to Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) in Braunschweig, Germany, in May. The assistant professor of education has been awarded the International Georg Arnhold Visiting Research Professorship on Education for Sustainable Peace.

GEI is a premier institution for research on knowledge structures, concepts of identity and patterns of interpretation in relation to education. The competition for the visiting research professorship was open to scholars from around the globe.

The Visiting Research Professorship aims at promoting research into education for sustainable peace with particular focus on educational media. The visiting professor is expected to participate in a one-week international summer school for young scholars and to develop the concept for and convene an international symposium to be held at the end of the visiting professor's stay.

 

Jang-Hwan Kwon (GrDip 96, MCSc 03), of Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS), recently delivered a presentation at the Ellucian Live conference covering the technical computing topic of Dimensional Modelling. Kwon was the only Quebecker in attendance and one of only 200 Canadians of more than 9,000 delegates at the conference in Philadelphia.

Ellucian Live is a gathering of many colleges and universities around the world, primarily in North America, who use the Banner administrative system. Concordia uses two of its modules, Finance and Advancement, and boasts technical staff who find ways to enhance the product in addition to supporting it. 

Undergraduate students from the John Molson School of Business Francis-Carl Belanger, Marie-Philipe Boucher, Ludovic Jacques and Valentine Vaillant won gold at the 15th edition of the Global Business Case Competition, hosted by the University of Washington in Seattle from April 8 to 13.

The high-level research competition required participating teams to recommend a sustainable initiative and to identify two promising markets outside the U.S. for Napa Valley-based Frog’s Leap Winery. Teams were also asked to develop marketing plans for the firm.

Alexandra Meikleham, a first-year civil engineering and management undergraduate student, has won the 2013 Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation (CEMF) Engineering Undergraduate Scholarship – Quebec Region. The foundation offers five $5,000 annual scholarships to Canadian women in engineering.

Three students from the Department of Music — Mariana Costa de Hutten Czapski, Marco Liy and Keith Odell — have been selected to participate in the Monaco Electroacoustique conference in May 2013.

Monaco Electroacoustique is a conference and concert series that brings together a number of internationally recognized composers. The Concordia contingent is the only group of Canadian students travelling to Europe for the event.

The jury was composed by Mario Mary (artistic director of Monaco Electroacoustique), and Concordia music faculty members Rosemary Mountain, Eldad Tsabary and Ricardo Dal Farra.

Dal Farra will also be participating at the event, which runs from May 2 to 4.
 

It was a very strong finish for Concordia’s student chapter of the Society Automotive Engineers (SAE) in the SAE Aero Design West Competition, held April 12 to 14 in Van Nuys, California. A total of 37 teams from all across the world competed.

In the final round, Concordia’s successful aircraft was loaded up to its maximum gross takeoff weight of 34 pounds for its flight, moved up an astonishing seven places in the ranks to clinch its place in the final top 10. Core team members are Andrey Belchev, Mohamad Baiazid, Scott Williams, Elias Clark, Susan Fahmy, Philippe Gilbot-Ducray, Sathiss Selliah. 

Gabriel Bran Lopez, a graduate of Concordia’s Department of Communication Studies, was named La Presse’s Personality of the Week on April 17. The Guatemalan-born Bran Lopez is co-founder of the Festival de robotique FIRST (Favoriser l’Inspiration et la Reconnaissance des Sciences et de la Technologie).

The robotics competition brings together teams of high school students, an undergraduate mentor, who provides technical knowledge, and a sponsoring company that offers expertise and machinery. It’s part of Lopez’s effort to help lower Quebec’s dropout rate through his organization, Youth Fusion.