Lynn Smith, UBC's dean of Law from 1991-97, has been appointed a B.C. Supreme Court judge. She will replace Supreme Court Justice Kenneth MacKenzie, who has been appointed to the B.C. Court of Appeal.
Before joining the Faculty of Law faculty in 1981, Smith clerked for the chief justice of B.C. and practiced general litigation with Shrum Liddle and Hebenton in Vancouver. In 1994, Canadian Lawyer magazine named Smith one of the 20 most powerful lawyers in Canada.
The appointments were made in June by Federal Justice Minister and Attorney-General Anne McLellan.
UBC Economics Prof. Jonathan Kesselman has been honoured with the 1998 Douglas Purvis Prize for excellence in writing on Canadian economic policy. Kesselman received the prize and $10,000 at the recent annual meeting of the Canadian Economics Association in Ottawa.
Kesselman's treatise "General Payroll Taxes: Economics, Politics, and Design" was viewed by the selection committee as a landmark contribution to an area of public finance long neglected by academic and economic policy analysts.
It includes a proposal to replace the GST with a general payroll tax. The selection committee says the monograph, published by the Canadian Tax Foundation, will have a significant and lasting impact on policy thinking about payroll taxes in Canada and abroad.
Fourth-year Arts student Melanie Little won $1,500 towards UBC tuition as the grand prize winner in the UBC Bookstore's Read About It! Write About It! Book Review Competition. She reviewed Stuart Mclean's Stories from the Vinyl Cafe.
Runners-up Christine Adkins, Brett Gubisic and Michael Lewkonia each received $150 in Bookstore gift certificates.
UBC Electrical Engineering Prof. Guy Dumont is the first recipient of the Universal Dynamics Prize for Leadership in Process Control Technology. Dumont pioneered the development of a general purpose "smart" controller for industrial use.
The controller is being used in a broad range of commercial industries from pulp and paper to glass manufacturing and brewing.
Universal Dynamics President Steve Hagemoen says Dumont's 20 years of groundbreaking research and technological innovations are dramatically improving the way plants control manufacturing processes.
The Richmond B.C. company supplies high-technology systems and engineering services to heavy industry around the world.
UBC Prof. Thomas Cavalier-Smith, a leading botany researcher, has been elected to the Royal Society of London, one of the highest honours in the British academic community.
Cavalier-Smith is internationally known for his work in the area of early molecular evolution. He has reformed the classification of single-celled creatures such as Protozoa and established a sixth kingdom of life, the Chromista, which includes the kelps and other brown seaweeds.
He was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada last November. Cavalier-Smith was educated at Cambridge and London universities and came to UBC nine years ago as a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) Evolutionary Biology Program.