Mechanical Engineering Prof. Mohamed Gadala, together with Tristar Industries, has won the 1997 NSERC University-Industry Partnership Award.

The award recognizes the extensive collaboration between Gadala and Tristar, a local manufacturer of equipment for the pulp and paper industry, in developing a new design of a pulp washer drum. The adoption of the new design by the pulp and paper industry has led Tristar to establish a new line of equipment.

A play co-authored by Creative Writing student Patti Flather received seven Dora and Mavor Moore Award nominations for the 1996/97 Toronto theatre season.

The play, Sixty Below, was produced at the Native Canadian Centre in Toronto by Native Earth Performing Arts.

The nominations, all in the small theatre division, included outstanding new play, outstanding production, and awards for direction and individual performances.

Flather, who lived in the Yukon for eight years, is in the second year of a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She wrote the play with Leonard Linklater, a First Nations journalist and writer.

Neurobiologist Peter Reiner has been named as the first recipient of the Louise A. Brown Chair in Neurosciences, a $1-million chair established to support research in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Reiner, who is an associate professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry, studies brain function and the causes of Alzheimer's disease at the Kinsmen Laboratory of Neurological Research based at UBC.

He investigates how the production of the beta amyloid protein is regulated within the brain. The protein's over-production in certain forms of Alzheimer's triggers a sequence of events that result in brain cell death. Unravelling the details of this process may lead to a cure for the disease, Reiner says.

Gabe Meranda is the new executive director of Hillel House, which this year begins its second half-century of service and programs for Jewish students at UBC and throughout the Lower Mainland.

Meranda was director of the Jewish Students' Union at the University of Western Ontario before being appointed to a three-year term at Hillel House.

Activities at Hillel House include beginners Hebrew classes, seminars on Kaballah (Jewish mysticism), and occasional Friday night Sabbath dinners. For more information call 224-4748.

Geography Prof. Olav Slaymaker was recently elected president of the International Association of Geomorphologists for a four-year term.

The association represents researchers from 55 countries. It is affiliated with the International Council of Scientific Unions through the International Geographical Union and the International Union of Geological Sciences.

Working groups within the association during Slaymaker's term have been struck in the areas of volcanic hazards, geo-archaeology, problems of large river behaviour and geomorphology and environmental management.