UBC Reports | Vol. 48 | No. 13 | Nov.
7, 2002
UBC Around the World
England
Last summer, UBC Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Prof. Anthony Barrett led a team of UBC students to the village
of Baginton in central England to carry out the annual excavation
of the Lunt Fort, a Roman military establishment dating to
the age of the emperor Nero.
The UBC team is the only non-British unit to be granted access
to the site designated by the British Parliament as a site
of national importance.
Germany
UBC Computer Science Prof. Wolfgang Heidrich is heading up
a joint project with McGill University and the Max-Planck
Institute in Germany using remote robotic technology developed
at UBC. The project will enable medical students to practice
surgical techniques and simulate actual operations without
requiring a cadaver.
UBC researchers are using the robotic arm to cut through
liver and artificial brain tissue and to record cutting and
deformation forces as well as other data so realistic that
surgical simulations can be developed.
Syria
Since 2001, UBC Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Asst. Prof. Lisa Cooper and graduate students have been working
with researchers from a number of Canadian universities and
museums on the archaeological expedition of Tell ‘Acharneh
in Western Syria. The site occupies several millennia in antiquity
and was recently visited by Syrian Minister of Culture Najwa
Qassab Hasan.
Japan
UBC Civil Engineering Assoc. Prof. Loretta Li is supervising
graduate students at Kyushu University in Japan on a project
that investigates the performance of various natural soils
as municipal waste landfill liners. The work examines retention
of toxic leachate that is generated by the action of water
on waste fly ash, which is commonly deposited in municipal
landfills.
China
UBC became the first Canadian university to offer an MBA
program in China when the Faculty of Commerce launched its
International MBA Program at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
in 2001.
The program has been officially approved by the Chinese Ministry
of Education and is taught entirely by UBC Commerce faculty.
Recruitment is underway for the second group of students to
begin classes in January 2003.
Vietnam
In May 2003, the Centre for Human Settlements will conclude
a five-year $10-million project to help reduce poverty in
Vietnam. Canadian and Vietnamese academics are working together
with 15 Vietnamese communities to reduce poverty by building
latrines and wells, rearing hardier breeds of chickens and
planting income-generating pepper trees. UBC is also helping
Vietnamese universities generate solutions to localized poverty.
The Canadian International Development Agency provided half
the funds for the project.
Hong Kong
School of Architecture Assoc. Director Jerzy Wojtowicz recently
received Honourable Mention in the International Competition
for the Development of the Intergrated Art, Cultural and Entertainment
District at the West Kowloon Reclamation Waterfront. The award
was given for “its elegant and well-balanced simplicity
and the appropriate distinctions it draws between cultural
and commercial uses,” noted the jury.
Australia
Philip Evans, director of the UBC Centre for Advanced Wood
Processing, recently completed the first description of the
wood anatomy of a new conifer tree species discovered five
years ago growing in an isolated sandstone gorge near Sydney.
The species, called Wollemia nobilis, was known only from
the fossil record and was previously thought to be extinct.
The new discovery has sparked worldwide interest.
India
UBC School of Nursing Director Sally Thorne took part in
the first graduation ceremony at the Guru Nanak College of
Nursing in Punjab, India, where UBC faculty and students have
been helping to provide better education for young women and
improve health care since 1997. “You would not believe
the pride that this rural region of the Punjab takes in UBC,”
says Thorne, “and how high profile our university is
here.”
Brazil
The UBC Faculty of Commerce has signed an agreement with
Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC), a leading executive
development school in Brazil. Under the agreement, Commerce
will work with FDC on joint executive training programs and
host an EMBA module on our campus in August 2003. Discussions
are now underway on co-operative executive programs in logistics
and supply chain management.
Guatemala
A team of students from UBC’s Global Outreach Students’
Association built water filters in the valley community of
Chitulul, Guatemala last summer. The team uses BioSand water
filters, developed by the Centre for Affordable Water Sanitation
and Technology in Calgary, to remove 100 per cent of parasites
and 99.9 per cent of bacteria, including cholera, which recently
killed two dozen children in one rural community.
|
