Five Faculty Recognized for Scholarly Achievement
Five faculty members at the University of Prince Edward Island have been recognized for their outstanding achievements as researchers. Dr. John Burka, Dr. Annabel Cohen, Dr. Ian Dohoo, Dr. Kathy Gottschall-Pass, and Dr. Sheldon Opps have each received a UPEI Faculty Association Merit Award for Scholarly Achievement. These awards honour faculty members who have achieved significant and continuing productivity in scholarly research and/or artistic creation. Plaques and cheques were presented to the recipients recently at a Faculty Recognition Reception jointly sponsored by the UPEI Faculty Association and the Office of the President.
Dr. John Burka joined UPEI in 1985 as one of the founding faculty members at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC). His research program is in the area of aquatic pharmacology; and in recent years he has been studying the development of resistance by sea lice to antiparasitic drugs. In the last 10 years, he has received research grants in excess of $800,000 and is a co-investigator on a recent Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant for $2.3 million. He received the AVC Pfizer Award for Research Excellence in 2001, currently serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and has been recognized for "fostering the awareness of science in Canada". Dr. Burka has been very active in promoting science and technology awareness, having served as Chair of the PEI Science Fair Organizing Committee, coordinator of PEI Science and Technology Awareness programs, Chair of Atlantic Provinces Council on the Sciences (APICS) committees, and a member of the Sanofi-Aventis Biotech Challenge Committee.
Dr. Annabel Cohen has established an internationally recognized research program in music psychology. Since 1996 she has obtained research grants in excess of $3.25 million. She has also led large multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research projects investigating how multimedia can best enhance learning in a variety of cultural contexts. Dr. Cohen is currently completing a book, Foundations of Music Cognition, to be published by Cambridge University Press; she has been invited to be the next editor of the Journal Psychomusicology; and is currently serving on five other scholarly editorial boards. Since 2004, she has been a reviewer for the Canada Research Chairs program. While achieving a national and international reputation, Dr. Cohen has at the same time incorporated numerous UPEI undergraduates into her research program, many of whom have gone on to graduate studies or related employment.
Dr. Ian Dohoo, an internationally recognized veterinary epidemiologist, joined UPEI in 1985 as one of the founding faculty members at AVC. He has co-authored a textbook on veterinary epidemiology that is widely used around the world for graduate training programs (a second edition is expected in 2008). In 2005 he became one of only four veterinarians elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in the inaugural year. In the last 18 months he played a key role in the development of two major research programs, the Canadian Bovine Mastitis Research Network and the Maritime Quality Milk Project. Dr. Dohoo also recently led the creation of a new Centre for Veterinary Epidemiologic Research at UPEI which will house the new Canada Research Chair in Population Health.
Joining UPEI in 1996, Dr. Kathy Gottschall-Pass' research program on bioactive compounds in wild blueberries provided the initial seeds from which the current bioresource direction of UPEI has been built. She has garnered numerous research grants. Dr. Gottschall-Pass led the research initiative in the Department of Family and Nutritional Sciences, and her hard work to establish the graduate program in the Faculty of Science has been instrumental in UPEI's current success in the area of bioactives. She has also made tremendous contribution to service within the University, most notably as Chair of the Animal Care Committee.
As a theoretical physicist, Dr. Sheldon Opps has established a robust research program involving use of various computer simulations methods to study physical properties of soft condensed matter or complex fluids, with particular relevance to biological systems. He has received over $160,000 in research grants from several sources, and he was part of the Atlantic Computational Excellence Network (ACEnet) which has received $29.8 million in funding. Dr. Opps currently serves as Director of the Physics Co-op program which he initiated in the Department of Physics. He was also instrumental in the development and refinement of the Faculty of Science graduate program and served as a member of the Graduate Studies Committee from 2001 to 2005.
