Kudos

Andrea Cameron (Nick Pearce Photo)

Congratulations to Andrea Cameron (recently graduated MASc), Corinne MacDonald (Engineering) and Eldon Gunn (Engineering) upon being awarded the 2009 Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) Practice Prize for their work, entitled, “Improving Production and Inventory Planning for Scotsburn Ice Cream.” The Practice Prize award is given to recognize the outstanding application of the operational research approach to the solution of applied problems.  The main criteria considered in evaluating submissions are project impact on the client organization, contribution to the practice of operational research, quality of analysis, degree of challenge, and quality of written and oral presentation.

Congratulations to Phil Cox (Computer Science) upon receiving the “Most Influential Paper Award for important influences on Visual Language/Human-Centric Computing research or commerce over the last 20 years.”  It was awarded by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.  Dr. Cox’s paper was about the visual programming language Prograph, which was designed to make software development easier, faster, more reliable, and as many users reported, more fun. The work is very widely cited, and the commercial product based on it won several industry awards and was used in a wide variety of applications, such as car configuration (Renault), online stock trading (Montgomery Securities), and educational programming products for children (Apple).

Congratulations to Dalhousie’s Facilities Management Team. Dalhousie University was awarded the Victor Thibault Award for Barrier Free Design, for the Fenwick Ramp Project, by the Canadian Paraplegic Association (Nova Scotia). The main purpose of this award is to recognize the contributions of businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies with regards to accessible renovations.

Congratulations to Fred Fountain (DMRF Board Member) who is being honoured with the Canadian Red Cross 2009 Humanitarian Award.  The award will be presented to Mr. Fountain, LLD on November 12 at the Red Cross gala dinner in Halifax.

Congratulations to Karen Hall (BSc student in Health Promotion), winner of the $5,000 Northern Resident Award from the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS), Canadian Northern Studies Trust (CNST). The purpose of the CNST Awards Program is to develop a cadre of scholars and scientists with northern experience and at the same time enhance the educational opportunities available for northern residents to obtain post-secondary education at Canadian universities and colleges.

Congratulations to the team of Marek Lipczak, Yeming Hu, Yael Kollet (PhD Computer Science students) for winning two out of three tasks in ECML/PKDD (European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practices of Knowledge Discovery in Databases) Discovery Challenge 2009, for their tag recommender system.  In the third task, their tag recommender system was third.  In social computing networks, users can assign “tags” as descriptors of certain pages or parts of pages. The problem is that these are personalized and there is no vocabulary control. Tag recommender systems will recommend tags to be used based on what other users have assigned and on the content of the pages. This Lipczak/Hu/Kollet tag recommender will become a part of the BibSonomy, a social bookmarking system for websites and scientific publications. (Supervisor: Evangelos Milios)

Congratulations to Allison Mackie (MASc candidate, Civil and Resource Engineering) whose paper, entitled, “Characteristics of Cement Kiln Dust and Preliminary Assessment of Capacity to Neutralize Acidic Wastewaters,” was selected as the Best Graduate Student Presentation at the recent 2009 Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) Annual General Meeting and Conference.

Congratulations to Winston Mosher (Master’s student, Process Engineering & Applied Science) for winning the Award of Merit in the International Poster Session at the International Conference of Powder Metallurgy and Particulate Materials held in Las Vegas, Nevada. This International Conference is the world’s largest annual conference in the area of powder metallurgy and attracts thousands of delegates from many different countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. (Supervisor: Paul Bishop)

Congratulations to Ron O’Dor (Biology), who was named Canadian Geographic’s 2009 Environmental Scientist of the Year. Pick up the June 2009 issue of Canadian Geographic to read more about Dr. O’Dor’s Transparent Oceans Project.

Congratulations to Donald Weaver (Medicine), recipient of the Prix Galien Canada 2009 Research Award. This Award is presented to the researcher or the research team judged by the Jury to have made the most significant contribution to pharmaceutical research in Canada. Dr. Weaver will be receiving his award on November 17 in Ottawa.

Kudos from the Vice-President Academic and Provost is published regularly with a focus on celebrating external recognition for outstanding achievements of Dalhousie faculty, staff, and students. The Office of the Vice-President Academic and Provost relies on you to provide information regarding awards and recognitions received. If you have recently received special recognition, or know of a colleague who has, please submit this news to alan.shaver@dal.ca for inclusion in an upcoming publication of Kudos.