Mechanical Engineering Prof. Clarence de Silva has won the 1996 Meritorious Achievement Award pre sented by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists.

De Silva has held the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council - BC Packers Research Chair in Industrial Automation at UBC since 1988. His research activities are primarily in the areas of process automation, robotics, intelligent control and instrumentation. Prior to coming to UBC he taught at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a founding member of the Robotics Institute, and was a Visiting Professor at Cambridge University as a Senior Fulbright Fellow. He is currently a Killam Faculty Research Fellow and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Nelems is a professor in the Dept. of Surgery and on staff at Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre.

Construction of the new centre, to be located in Kelowna, is underway and it is expected to open in 1998.

His responsibilities include the development of a co-ordinated and consistent cancer program between the cancer centre and the host institution, Kelowna General Hospital.

Shawn Chen, a student in his final year of the Master of Business Adminis tration program at UBC, has received a $2,000 bursary in the Bank of Montreal's Brain Money Challenge.

Chen, who was a student intern in the Real Estate Dept. at the bank's B.C. division office in Vancouver, won the bursary for submitting a marketing program making use of the bank's automated banking machines. The competition required interns to submit a paper identifying a specific business opportunity the bank could undertake to enhance customer service.