A total of fourteen UBC faculty members have been announced by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) as Fellows and as Members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Nine UBC faculty have been named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada – the highest honour a scholar can achieve in the arts, humanities and sciences in Canada.
Five faculty are named as new members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. The College provides the RSC with a multigenerational capacity to help Canada and the world address major challenges and seize new opportunities including those identified in emerging fields.
The 2018 Fellows and Members will be welcomed into the RSC this November, at a celebration in Halifax.
Citations courtesy of the Royal Society of Canada
New fellows
Uri Ascher (Computer Science)
Uri Ascher has made fundamental contributions to scientific computing and its application in computer graphics, geophysics, image processing, robotics, semiconductors, fluid dynamics and finance. His achievements enhance our understanding of simulating constrained differential equations, Hamiltonian systems, inverse problems, PDE-constrained optimization, and multiscale methods. Ascher’s mark on the practice of scientific computing is embodied in many highly cited publications, including three monographs and widely used software packages.
Andrea Damascelli (Physics and Astronomy)
Andrea Damascelli’s research on the electronic structure of solids and the development of innovative spectroscopy techniques to study and manipulate quantum materials have led to pivotal contributions to the field of condensed matter physics. From uncovering the role of spin-orbit coupling in the superconductivity of Sr2RuO4 and Fe-based systems, to revealing charge order driven by Fermi-arc instabilities in cuprates, Damascelli’s pioneering work has bolstered and refocused the international community.
Peter Dauvergne (Political Science)
Peter Dauvergne is a world-leading scholar of global environmental politics. His pioneering research on consumption, corporations, and social movements has significantly advanced the theoretical understanding of the causes and consequences of global environmental change. Extensive field-based research in the Asia-Pacific has further unlocked key insights into the transnational causes of tropical deforestation. His books have received multiple international awards and been widely translated.
Shoukat Dedhar (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)
Shoukat Dedhar’s pioneering work in the field of cell adhesion has uncovered the molecular basis of how cells in the body adhere to the surrounding matrix and how cell adhesion regulates fundamental aspects of cellular physiology. His discovery of Integrin-Linked Kinase has generated a large body of work which has demonstrated fundamental roles of this protein in normal tissue function and pathologies such as cardiovascular dysfunction, renal failure, and cancer.
Bryan Gick (Linguistics)
Bryan Gick’s pioneering work uncovering the basic mechanisms of spoken language is remarkable for its originality, impact and breadth. He has made surprising discoveries in multimodal perception, advanced theories of movement control, developed applications for ultrasound imaging in language teaching and clinical intervention and co-developed ArtiSynth, the state-of-the-art biomechanical modelling platform for head/neck/face simulation, applied in areas from surgical planning to telecommunications and computer animation.
Daniel Justice (The Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of English Language and Literatures)
Daniel Heath Justice is a leading expert in contemporary Indigenous Studies, whose influence extends across North America, the Pacific Rim, and Europe. His publications in kinship, animal studies, sexuality, and literary history are prolific and wide-ranging. Together with his creative work, his scholarship demonstrates a gift to explicate complex social and cultural problems in lucid and accessible language, and it is characterized by a strong sense of mission and responsibility.
Shawn Mansfield (Wood Science)
Shawn Mansfield is a world-leading authority on plant secondary cell wall biosynthesis. He is internationally recognized for his efforts linking genomics, biochemistry, and development, and using functional genomics has discovered genes critical to plant growth. His work has significant implications for the improvement of bioenergy crops and forest trees, with the potential to substantially ameliorate the anthropogenic footprint of industrial processing and mitigate atmospheric CO2 release.
Christopher Overall (Oral Biological & Medical Sciences)
Christopher Overall is best known for proteomic method development for discovery of protease substrates in vivo, so establishing the field of degradomics. He has leveraged these techniques to reveal new biological roles for proteases and their aberrations in disease. In generating clinically relevant knowledge on how proteases dampen disease-fighting defence systems in inflammatory and immunodeficiency diseases to restore homeostasis, degradomics revolutionized understanding of protease function and drug targeting.
Thomas Oxland (Mechanical Enginering & Orthopaedics)
Thomas Oxland is an international authority in the biomechanical behaviour of the human spine. His seminal research work includes the biomechanics of the normal, degenerated, and injured spine, spinal cord injury, spinal and other orthopaedic implants and surgical techniques. He was a key research and development engineer for novel spinal implants that remain in clinical use today, more than twenty-five years after the initial surgeries.
New Members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists
Lori Brotto (Obstetrics and Gynaecology)
Lori Brotto, a Canada Research Chair in Women’s Sexual Health, is internationally recognized as a leader in sexual health research. She has led teams to develop effective psychological interventions to improve sexual dysfunction and genital pain, which collectively affect up to a third of women. Her work has influenced international practice guidelines. In less than ten years since the start of her academic appointment (excluding parental leaves), and 15 years since her PhD, she has achieved over 130 peer reviewed publications, 61 grants, and her book “Better Sex Through Mindfulness”, a translation of her program of research on women’s sexual health, was published in 2018 by Greystone Publishing.
Ayesha S. Chaudhry (Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice)
Ayesha S. Chaudhry is Canada Research Chair in Religion, Law and Social Justice and Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She is a leading anti-racist feminist scholar of Islam, and consults on high-level national and international cases concerning human rights, religious freedom, and pluralism. Her research creates space for creatively re-imagining the study of Islam, interrogating what it means to be Muslim, and bringing an intersectional and de-colonial lens to Muslim discourse.
William Cheung (Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries)
William Cheung has contributed much to the science of climate change; identifying effective solutions to address its impacts on ocean biodiversity and fisheries, and predicting the sustainability of future marine, fisheries and coastal systems. Internationally renowned, Dr. Cheung is highly effective in helping local and international communities understand how their actions are affecting the oceans, and informing policy and practice changes to ensure the sustainability of living marine resources.
Kiley Hamlin (Psychology)
Kiley Hamlin is an Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Psychology. Her internationally recognized and award-winning research explores the earliest developmental origins of the human moral sense, by examining the emergence of moral judgement and action in preverbal infants, who lack language, sophisticated cognitive abilities, and extensive experience with cultural norms and values. More broadly, Hamlin is interested in the origins of human social and moral cognition from both an ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspective.
Teresa Liu-Ambrose (Physical Therapy)
Teresa Liu-Ambrose, UBC Professor of Physical Therapy and Canada Research Chair, is an international leader in Healthy Aging Research. Using rigorous clinical trial methodology, she has pioneered insights into various types of exercise programmes in preventing cognitive decline and falls in older adults. Her work has led to surprising and highly influential insights in an area of profound societal need. She has assumed leadership roles in major Canadian and international forums and projects, and translated her findings to directly benefit patients.