UBC News Digest

The UBC News Digest is a weekly summary of news stories about UBC people, research, learning, community, and internationalization initiatives. News Digest past issues are also available on-line.

Jul. 2, 2004

• Engineering Students Build Car That Gets 1,747 Miles to the Gallon
• Sex Hormone’s Link to Stress, Depression Explored
• UBC Engineers Without Borders Co-President Earns YWCA Woman of Distinction Award
• Cell Phone Innovation Earns Prof Top German Award

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Engineering Students Build Car That Gets 1,747 Miles to the Gallon

A team of UBC mechanical engineering students recently finished first overall in the 25th annual Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This year over 30 engineering teams from across North America competed to obtain the best possible fuel mileage from a single-person vehicle powered by a Briggs and Stratton engine.

Last year the UBC team placed first among the collegiate-class entries with a result of 900 miles per US gallon, but missed out on the top spot overall. After 12 months of refining the design of the vehicle and with the addition of a tuned fuel injection system on the single cylinder 148cc engine, the team was able to improve upon last year's result with an actual on-track result of 1,747 miles per US gallon. This spectacular result equates to almost 738km on a single litre of fuel.

For more information about the SAE competition, visit: www.sae.org/students/smeventinfo.htm

To learn more about UBC's supermileage team, visit:www.mech.ubc.ca/~supermileage

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Sex Hormone’s Link to Stress, Depression Explored

The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) is providing $60,000 in 2004 to a researcher with the University of British Columbia to study how testosterone plays a role in stress-related activity in brain circuitry. NARSAD, the largest donor-supported organization in the world devoted exclusively to funding scientific research on psychiatric disorders, is giving a two-year Young Investigator Award to Dr. Victor Viau to research the topic.

NARSAD's Young Investigator Award Program provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research. Basic and/or clinical investigators are supported, but research must be relevant to schizophrenia, major affective disorders, or other serious mental illnesses.

An assistant professor of anatomy and cell biology, Viau wants to reveal the pathways, transmitters and cellular mechanisms that testosterone uses to alter the brain circuits that relay stress-related information. His work may help to diagnose and treat depression and other sex dependent disorders including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

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UBC Engineers Without Borders Co-President Earns YWCA Woman of Distinction Award

UBC student Monica Rucki has received one of five 2004 Women of Distinction Awards from the YWCA of Vancouver for being a Young Trail Builder. Rucki is an overseas volunteer and co-president of the UBC chapter of Engineers Without Borders. When she accepted a work term in East Timor in 2003 to develop a gravity fed irrigation system for rice farmers, she noticed people needed a way to preserve fish and fruit and built solar dryers for them. She has been a driving force behind the introduction of a course on international development within the applied science program at UBC. Rucki has also launched an IT training program in the Downtown Eastside and volunteers her time teaching one-on-one computer classes at the Dr. Peter Centre.

The YWCA Women of Distinction Awards were created in 1984 to recognize women whose activities are contributing to the health of our community.

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Cell Phone Innovation Earns Prof Top German Award

UBC electrical engineering professor Robert Schober has been honoured with the 2004 Innovation Award from the Vodafone Foundation for Research in Mobile Communications. This is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of communications in Germany and comes with 25,000 Euros (approx $40,000).

Schober holds a Canada Research Chair in Wireless Communications and is an expert in the development of new algorithms for wireless communication systems, allowing more information to transmit over a given bandwith with a given complexity. Schober’s findings have been implemented in test mobiles from Philips, and field tests in Cingular's network have shown capacity improvements of up to 80 per cent.

Together with co-recipients Raimund Meyer, Wolfgang Gerstacker, and Johannes Huber of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, Schober received the Vodafone award for work entitled “Single Antenna Interference Cancellation (SAIC) for Global Systems for Mobile Communications.”

To view Robert Schober's website, go to www.ece.ubc.ca/~rschober/rschober.html

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