Concordia Journal Home > Archives > March 6, 2008 issue >

Accolades 

Robert Tittler (History, Emeritus, and Adjunct Professor of Art History) was presented with a festschrift, a commemorative volume of essays celebrating his contributions to the field of English local history. The presentation of Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007) by its editors, Norman L. Jones and Daniel Woolf, took place at the Institute of Historical Research, London University, on Dec. 17. The 12 essays included one by current history professor Shannon McSheffrey.

Congratulations to François-André Roy, a part-time instructor in the Département d’Études françaises, who won the Radio-Canada literary competition in the poetry category. His entry was called La science de l’adieu. The judges praised the way it created a dialogue with the great tragic poets of history in “verse sculpted with rare precision.” Roy, who is a literary and film critic as well as a poet, has published about 25 books, many of them translated into other languages. His latest collection is called Tout, rien, quelque chose (Herbes rouges).

Suresh Goyal (Decision Sciences/MIS) wrote a letter to The Gazette agreeing with another correspondent that productivity improvement strategies are often neglected by companies despite the fact that they could save between 20 and 40 per cent of direct labour and management costs. He added, “University graduates with majors in areas that primarily specialize in productivity improvement are not adequately compensated by Canadian companies for their expertise.”

Raymond Le Van Mao (Chemistry/Biochemistry) has been awarded a $200,000 Strategic Project Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. He will use these funds over the next two years to study new catalytic processes for the production of premium gasoline and monomers of plastics and synthetic fibers from cellulosic biomass.

Concordia University’s installation of Canada’s first 802.11n wireless network on a university campus was recently highlighted in CNN Money, The Gazette, Computer World, IT World, and Tech World, among other publications. The deployment of Cisco’s next-generation 802.11n wireless technology allows the university to expand its campus-wide wireless network, which includes not only the indoor wireless network, but an outdoor mesh network as well. The outdoor network is available to students subscribed to Web Integrated Services for Education (WISE).

Congratulations to Fariborz Haghighat (Building/Civil/ Environmental Engineering), who has been named a Fellow of ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. The designation recognizes distinction in the arts and sciences of environmental technology, earned, in his case, through his achievement as a researcher and educator. He was one of the first scientists to use numerical simulation to predict emissions and absorption of volatile organic compounds from various building materials.

Jim Pfaus, acting director of the Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology and a professor in the Department of Psychology, was quoted in Time Magazine’s recent issue on “The Science of Romance: Why We Love” (Jan. 28) about how the activation of certain neurochemical systems in the brain link sexual reward to the characteristics of the situation or person that was present when those feelings were created.