UBC's Curator of Manuscripts, George Brandak, has been awarded a Regional History Certificate of Merit (British Columbia/Yukon) by the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) for his outstanding contribution to the study of British Columbia's past.

Brandak, who has worked in the Special Collections Division of the UBC Library since 1973, served as an archivist with the Provincial Archives of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan Archives before joining UBC.

Through his work in Special Collections, Brandak developed an expertise on historical sources relating to the natural resource industries in the province, as well as labour history and the development of socialism in B.C. politics.

Brandak was cited by the CHA for his breadth of knowledge, inventive approach to research and his enthusiasm for the province's history.

The award is given for the support of an outstanding first-year graduate student.

Schwarz conducts laboratory research on the effects of local anaesthetic agents on the central nervous system. He is also a clinical investigator with the Clinical Pharmacology Research Organization (CPRO), which is a joint venture of the Dept. of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the Dept. of Anaesthesia.

He was cited for his "pioneering, unique and most important contributions toward the advancement of spacecraft dynamics, control and space robotics, and for his pervasive academic impact upon several generations of spacecraft dynamics and control students."

Modi also received the Best Paper Award at the Sixth International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference in Los Angeles last May. His paper, Drag Reduction and Vibration Suppression of a D-Section Structural Member Through Momentum Injection, was one of more than 500 contributions presented at the conference.

Houston, who received a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Waterloo, served as a faculty member in the university's Dept. of Kinesiology from 1969 and spent a year as a visiting professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre at Dallas and at the University of Copenhagen.

In addition to his memberships in the Canadian Association of Sports Sciences and the American College of Sports Medicine, Houston served as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Nutrition Today Society and the Sport Nutrition Advisory Committee for the Sports Medicine Council of Canada.

From 1992 to 1994, he was president of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology. Houston currently chairs the Registry Sub-Committee of the Sports Nutrition Advisory Committee. He is the author of the recently published book, Biochemistry Primer for Exercise Sciences.

Read received his undergraduate training in music at Florida's Jacksonville University and his MMus from the University of Victoria where he served as a full-time faculty member between 1975 and 1986. He also studied at the Music Academy of the City of Basel, Switzerland and at Yale University Summer Institute for Conducting and Chamber Music. Prior to joining UBC in 1990, Read was a faculty member at the University of Delaware, Newark.

A co-founder of the Victoria Early Music Association, he is a past board member of the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Victoria Symphony Association.

Read has participated in numerous recordings and has made solo appearances in France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Canada and the U.S. His performances as principal bassoonist include the Vancouver Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera National Company and the CBC Curio Ensemble.

In addition to serving as a member of the visiting faculty of the European Mozart Academy in Prague, Florence and Krakow, Read has also been a guest professor at the Utrecht Conservatory of Music in the Netherlands and, more recently, at the Montpellier Conservatory in France.

His research interests include 18th century performance, conducting, chamber music and bassoon pedagogy.