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Accolades 

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On June 11, founding Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Jack Bordan was named a Fellow of Engineers Canada – the highest award bestowed by the 234 000-member national organization that regulates the engineering profession nationwide.

Bordan started his career at SGWU in 1951 as a lecturer in physics and a professor in engineering. In 1957, he established an engineering certificate program and became the founding Chair of the Faculty of Engineering. He served as its Dean until 1968, when he was named VP Academic Affairs. Bordan retired from Concordia in 1990.

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Physics Professor Alexandre Champagne (see related story in this issue) was part of an international team of scientists who has published the paper titled “Mechanical Control of Spin States in Spin-1 Molecules and the Underscreened Kondo Effect” in Science magazine, June 11, 2010.

The paper addresses fundamental questions about the coupling between mechanics, electronics and magnetics at the nanoscale. Read more about it online.

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Welcome home to Stingers football head coach Gerry McGrath, who’s just returned from Regina after a two-week stint as a guest coach with the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders. This was the fourth straight year McGrath made the trip to work with the Riders’ kickers and punters.

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A standing ovation for Christine Jones (BFA 89) who, on June 13, won a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Musical for her work on the punk rock opera, American Idiot. In 2007, Jones was nominated for a Tony for her design work for the Broadway play, Spring Awakening. Last year, she was the recipient of an Award of Distinction from the Faculty of Fine Arts (see Journal, April 2, 2009).

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Congratulations to Aydin Matlabi (BFA 07) for winning the Dick and Gretchen Evans Prize for Photography. The one-time $6 000 cash prize to Matlabi was presented June 10 during the announcement of three Dick and Gretchen Evans Fellowships in Photography. Totalling $51 000, the funds will go to three outstanding photography students in the final year of his/her graduate program who will receive $17 000 each. The first fellowship will be awarded in spring 2011.

The Iranian-born Matlabi, who will receive his MFA in Studio Arts at this year’s Convocation, has already established a successful career in photography. To read more about his experiences photographing the political upheaval in Iran in summer 2009, see Concordia Magazine [PDF], spring 2010.

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Congrats to the group of Electrical and Computer Engineering undergraduates who won silver at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT) Alive video awards. The prize was announced at the IEEE International Microwave Symposium May 23 to 28.

Concordia’s winning entry featured a Capstone project entitled Qx4 Quadrotor Hovering Robotic Platform, made by Zaid Al-Khatib, Hasan Ghazi Al-Khakani, Samer Komarji and Jaime Yu, and was supervised by ECE professor Amir Aghdam. Watch the team’s video and the other teams' videos. The international competition featured short, student-made videos describing their wireless systems-oriented design projects.