UBC Reports | Vol. 46 | No. 16 | Oct. 19, 2000

Physicist, forester earn science prize

Former graduate student named 'young innovator'

Two faculty members and a former graduate student are among the six winners of this year's Science Council of British Columbia's Science and Technology Awards.

Douglas Bonn, a professor of Physics and Astronomy, is the recipient of the Science Council's New Frontiers in Research Award.

Bonn, who credits his high school physics teacher with inspiring him to pursue a career in scientific research, received the prize for his study of high-temperature superconductors.

Bonn's success in studying how electrons respond to microwave and infrared radiation has earned him recognition as one of the world's top superconductor experimentalists.

In 1999 Bonn earned an NSERC Steacie Fellowship, considered to be one of the most important research prizes in Canada.

Fred Bunnell, a professor in the Faculty of Forestry, is the Science Council's Solutions Through Research Award winner this year.

For more than 30 years, Bunnell has applied his knowledge of forest practices and his love of nature to solutions that can sustain both.

Bunnell, who joined UBC in 1973, is also the director of the Centre for Applied Conservation Biology and the Forest Renewal B.C. Professor in Applied Conservation Biology.

David Burgoyne, head of research at Inflazyme Pharmaceuticals in Richmond, is the winner of the Young Innovator Award. The award goes to an individual under 40 who has had a major impact on science and technology in the province.

During his PhD studies at UBC in the early 1990s, Burgoyne discovered a steroid with anti-inflammatory properties useful in the treatment of diseases such as asthma. He was 25 years old at the time.

The Science and Technology Awards were established in 1980 by the Science Council of B.C. to recognize outstanding achievements by the province's scientists, engineers, industrial innovators and science communicators.

The award winners will be recognized at the annual Science Council Awards Dinner at the Hotel Vancouver Oct. 23.