UBC volunteers, educators, innovators, and leaders fill the ranks of this year's Science Council of B.C. award recipients.
Six out of the six awards to be presented at the Science Council's annual dinner Oct. 22 will go to UBC faculty members, an alumnus and an educational program.
UBC Prof. Ian Affleck, a condensed matter physicist, won the 1998 B.C. Science and Technology Award for New Frontiers in Research.
Affleck is working on understanding the problem of materials in which the interactions between the electrons, which cause superconductivity, are important.
Superconducting materials have applications in fields as diverse as medicine, computing and transportation.
Affleck's theoretical studies of electron-electron interactions are helping to bring the era of high-temperature superconductors much closer.
The Volunteer of the Year Award goes to Maria Issa, a clinical assistant professor in UBC's Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. For more than 10 years, Issa has helped create and deliver programs to motivate young women to consider careers in science and technology.
She participates in virtually all of the Society for Canadian Women In Science and Technology (SCWIST) programs, including one which enables female college students to meet women already in the workforce.
Issa also volunteers in the Scientists and Innovators in the Schools program.
Former TRIUMF director Erich Vogt won the Science Council Chairman's Award for Career Achievement.
One of Canada's best known nuclear physicists, he was TRIUMF's director from 1981 to 1994. He continues to conduct research and teaches first-year physics at UBC as a volunteer.
The first Business/Education Partnership Award goes to Engineering Assoc. Prof. Mike Jackson and Burnaby-based Thomas & Betts-Photon Systems Inc., a designer and manufacturer of fibre optic systems.
Jackson and his students in UBC's Ultrafast Electronics and Fibre Optics Laboratory began collaborating with the company in 1994.
UBC Engineering alumnus Glenn Fawcett is the winner of the B.C. Science and Technology Award for Industrial Innovation.
Fawcett, senior director of advanced systems for Vancouver-based Glenayre R&D Inc., has been involved in some of B.C.'s most impressive telecommunications innovations.
Two systems he engineered have helped make Glenayre B.C.'s largest high-tech company.
YES Camps are this year's winners of the Eve Savory Award for Science Communication.
Student-run, university-based YES (Youth Engineering and Science) Camps aim to develop an enthusiasm for science, engineering, technology and mathematics in young people. In B.C., camps take place at UVic, SFU, UBC and the University College of the Cariboo.
The award recognizes UBC alumna Eve Savory, who reports on science for CBC Television.