A total of ten UBC faculty members have been announced by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) as new Fellows and as new Members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Nine UBC faculty have been named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. The fellowship of the RSC comprises over 2,000 Canadian scholars, artists, and scientists, peer-elected as the best in their field. These are distinguished individuals from all branches of learning who have made remarkable contributions in the arts, the humanities and the sciences, as well as in Canadian public life.
One UBC faculty member was named as a new Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists is Canada’s first national system of multidisciplinary recognition for the emerging generation of Canadian intellectual leadership.
The 2021 Fellows and Members will be welcomed into the RSC in November, at the RSC Celebration of Excellence and Engagement.
Citations courtesy of the Royal Society of Canada
NEW FELLOWS
Dr. Alejandro Adem (Mathematics, UBCV)
Alejandro Adem is an internationally recognized mathematical scientist and scholar, and one of Canada’s foremost experts in the field of algebraic topology. He has made important theoretical and calculational contributions to the cohomology of groups and topological symmetries, successfully applying them to solve long-standing conjectures. Through his versatile approach, Adem has opened fertile lines of research connecting areas such as representations, homotopy theory, orbifolds, and aspects of mathematical physics.
Dr. Jeannette Armstrong (Community, Culture and Global Studies, UBCO)
Jeannette Armstrong, Syilx Okanagan, Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus. Recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Literature Achievement Award and the Eco Trust USA Buffett Award for Indigenous Leadership she works to change biases about Indigenous people. Her research in Okanagan Syilx environmental ethics is recognized globally. She serves on Canada’s Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge Subcommittee of Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife In Canada.
Dr. Curtis Berlinguette (Chemistry / Chemical and Biological Engineering, UBCV)
Curtis P. Berlinguette leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers at The University of British Columbia that are inventing and scaling disruptive clean energy materials. These efforts range from designing CO2 utilization technologies to building self-driving labs to advancing the fusion sciences. This collective body of work extends from the fundamental sciences all the way through to building commercial products.
Prof. Isabel Grant (Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBCV)
Isabel Grant is an internationally renowned scholar in criminal law and mental health law whose work centres the inequality of women and people with disabilities in the criminal justice system. Her research on topics such as sexual assault against women with mental disabilities, homicide, HIV nondisclosure prosecutions, and violence against women continues to influence Canadian jurisprudence, legislation, policy and scholarship.
Dr. Stephen Guy-Bray (English Language and Literatures, UBCV)
Stephen Guy-Bray was one of the first Canadian scholars working in what was then Gay and Lesbian Studies; he has continued to make significant contributions in this field for the last thirty years. He specializes in Renaissance poetry and in poetics. He has been instrumental in extending queer theory to a consideration of how queerness inheres in literariness and in poetics.
Dr. C.W. (Toph) Marshall (Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies, UBCV)
The tenuous job market of the 1990s, with sessional positions in five provinces, encouraged Toph Marshall to develop his practice-based research in the field of Greek and Roman theatre, focusing on stagecraft and how plays create meaning for an audience. With books on Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Roman comedy, he is now a leading scholar of ancient performance traditions. Other research has pioneered the study of classical reception in television and comic books.
Dr. Raymond Ng (Computer Science, UBCV)
Raymond Ng is the founding Director of the UBC Data Science Institute and a professor in Computer Science. He is also the Canada Research Chair in Data Science and Analytics. His research spans diverse topics in data science, data mining, text analytics and health informatics. His most cited research is on outlier detection and data clustering. He has co-led several large-scale genomic projects, specializing in biomarker identification and development.
Dr. Roger Wilson (Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies, UBCV)
Roger Wilson is the world authority on the archaeology of Roman Sicily. For over thirty years his ground-breaking books and articles have reshaped our understanding of the province and its complex cultural interactions. He has also conducted fundamental research on Sicilian mosaics in their Mediterranean context. His meticulous excavations have shed new light through pioneering use of scientific techniques on topics such as ancient Sicily’s rural economy and human health.
Dr. Alison Wylie (Philosophy, UBCV)
Alison Wylie is internationally recognized for catalyzing a thriving field at the intersection of philosophy of science and the historical sciences, and for game-changing insights in feminist philosophy. She deploys incisive analyses of archaeological practice to show how even fragmentary trace evidence can yield robust knowledge of the past. Her work reframing epistemic ideals like objectivity has had an impact on archaeological practice as well as in philosophy
NEW MEMBERS OF THE COLLEGE OF NEW SCHOLARS, ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS
Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot (Political Science, First Nations and Indigenous Studies and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBCV)
Sheryl Lightfoot, Canada Research Chair of Global Indigenous Rights and Politics, is internationally recognized for her expertise and groundbreaking research on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its implementation as well as its wider impacts on theory and practice at the international level. A globally recognized expert in international Indigenous politics, her research addresses the complex issues underlying the claims and negotiation of the rights of Indigenous peoples in various political spaces.