David Barnes has been appointed the new director of Plant Operations in Land and Building Services. Barnes has more than 20 years experience in facilities management. He is currently the superintendent of Facility Services for the Simcoe County District School Board in Ontario. Barnes begins his appointment Feb. 1.

Mechanical Engineering Prof. Clarence de Silva has received the Education Award of the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The award and $750 US were presented to de Silva at the awards dinner of the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition held in Nashville, Tenn. The award recognizes de Silva's seminal contributions to instrumentation and control education.

Two faculty members in the Dept. of Mathematics have received prestigious prizes in recognition of their outstanding research in Canadian mathematics. Prof. David Boyd earned the Canadian Mathematical Society's Jeffery-Williams Prize. It is awarded for outstanding contributions to mathematical research. Boyd is the first UBC faculty member to win the prize.

Assoc. Prof. Changfeng Gui was awarded University of Montreal-based Centre de Recherches Mathematiques' André-Aisenstadt Mathematics Prize for 1999. The prize recognizes talented young Canadian mathematicians for their achievement in pure and applied mathematics research.

Microbiology Prof. Emeritus Julian Davies has received the 1999 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Infectious Disease Research. Davies will receive $50,000 US and a silver medallion in recognition of his contribution to the understanding of the evolution and function of mechanisms of antibiotic resistance. He is the first Canadian to receive the award since the program began in 1977.

The Faculty of Medicine recently awarded two 1999 Distinguished Medical Research Lecturer awards to recognize research excellence in basic and clinical sciences.

Keith Walley, a professor in UBC's Dept. of Medicine and assistant head, Research, in the Dept. of Medicine at St. Paul's Hospital, gave the clinical sciences lecture.

Prof. Gerald Krystal of the Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine gave a lecture in basic sciences.