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Accolades 

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Open media MFA graduates Aaron Pollard and Adad Hannah have been presented with the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award by the Canada Council for the Arts. Worth $15 000 each, the awards recognize outstanding mid-career artists in the seven disciplines funded by the Canada Council: dance, integrated arts, media arts, music, theatre, visual arts and writing and publishing. The prizes were created using funds from a generous bequest made by the late Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton to the Canada Council.

The Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has awarded Concordia $108 052 for its research in the area of biometrics. The grant goes towards the advancement of the project Infrastructure for Advanced Non-Intrusive Time Resolved Investigation of Cardiovascular Flows, headed by mechanical and industrial engineering professor Lyes Kadem.

This investment is made under the CFI’s Leaders Opportunity Fund (LOF), which this year granted $59 million in support for 262 projects in 40 Canadian research institutions, allowing talented researchers to conduct cutting-edge research in world-class facilities.

Film professor Daniel Cross has taken top honours at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam for his film, Last Train Home. The film took the prize for Best Feature-Length Documentary and will screen at the Sundance Film Festival later this month.

Set in China, Last Train Home is an observational documentary that charts the dramatic story of one family but represents the challenges facing a changing nation and a troubled world.

Author and former English professor Clark Blaise has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Blaise, a graduate of Denison University (1961) and the University of Iowa (1964), moved to Montréal and acquired Canadian citizenship in 1966. He taught at Sir George Williams University where he helped establish the post-graduate creative writing program. Blaise is the author of nine story collections, three novels and three previous works of non-fiction.

On Dec. 30, Governor General Michaëlle Jean announced a total of 57 new appointments, including musicians Neil Young and Burton Cummings, former New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough, former Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon and former Nova Scotia Premier John F. Hamm.

In November, studio arts instructor Françoise Sullivan was given status as Officer within the Order of Canada. (See Journal, Nov. 26, 2009.)

Human systems intervention MA student Ronna Schwartz has received the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) director general’s award. Shwartz, who works as an outpatient physical therapist at the Allen Memorial wing of the Royal Victoria Hospital, received the honour for a program she initiated as part of her course AHSC 620, Individual Learning and Individual Change, to help integrate individuals suffering with mental illness back into the community.