Of note

Newfoundland artist and independent filmmaker Lori Clarke has won the National Film Board Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Documentary for her 2003 film Anatomist in Situ. The film screened at the DOXA Documentary Film and Video Festival in Vancouver in late May. Anatomist in situ is a portrait of anatomist and teacher Dr. Shakti Chandra, who has taught at Memorial University’s Faculty of Medicine for 30 years. This is the third and most prestigious award received for this film. Clarke also received a Special Jury's Award from the International Scientific Film Festival in Hungary and Best Music Score from the Nickel Independent Film Festival in 2003.

George Beckett, associate university librarian (health sciences), Health Sciences Library, was recently awarded the Canadian Health Libraries Association/Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada Margaret Ridley Charlton Award for Outstanding Achievement. He received the award in recognition of contributions to the association, leadership in the field of health sciences librarianship in Canada and for leadership in the creation of the Newfoundland & Labrador Health Knowledge Information Network (NLHKIN).

Jeff Biernaskie, who completed his PhD at Memorial under the supervision of Dr. Dale Corbett, was named in the May 24 edition of MacLeans magazine as one of “The best and brightest” in Canada. At age 28, Dr. Biernaskie has made a mark in stroke research in recent years, focusing on the functional recovery of rats following a stroke. His work was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and earned him a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Brain Star Award in 2002.

Dr. Bridget Fernandez, Genetics, has received the 2004 Founders Award from the Lung Association, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her team of respirologists, radiologists, pathologists and laboratory scientists has Fernandez has identified nine Newfoundland families with a strong genetic form of the disease. These families contain 34 individuals affected with the familial form of pulmonary fibrosis. Dr. Fernandez’ group is working to identify this gene, in the hopes that discovering its role in lung physiology will eventually lead to more effective therapy. 

Blue Lake was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal (Graduate) at convocation. His doctoral thesis, Patterning the Embryonic Brain: Multiple Signals Converge to Establish Spatial Identity Within a Neuromeric Field, looked at the neural patterning of the brain using the amphibian embryo as a model. His doctoral work was supervised by Dr. Ken Kao, Terry Fox Cancer Laboratory. During his studies he was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research scholarship valued at $19,000 a year for three years and also received the J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship for 2002-2003, valued at $5,000. Dr. Lake, who grew up in Bloomfield, Bonavista Bay, did his undergraduate degree at Memorial. He is now taking up a postdoctoral fellowship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York

Andrew O'Keefe, a B.Sc. honours student supervised by Dr. Maria Mathews, Community Health, won third prize for the poster Drink to your health? An examination of the relationship between alcohol consumption and health service use. The poster was presented at the inaugural Conference of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research in Montreal, May 25-28th. Dr. Mathews noted that Mr. O’Keefe’s poster, based on his B.Sc. honours thesis, was competing with work from master’s and doctoral students. Mr. O’Keefe has been accepted to the medical school for this year’s incoming class. Other presentations at CAHSPR were made by faculty members Drs. Sharon Buehler and Maria Mathews and graduate students Erin Mayo and Roger Chafe.

Kathryn Olsen, a 2004 graduate, won a silver medal at the 2004 Scientific Exhibit Awards of the American Roentgen Ray Society. Her project was an interactive computer exhibit on Abdominal Pseudoaneurysms: The Great Pretender. Dr. Paul Jean, Radiology, said Ms. Olsen has already many qualities that will make her an outstanding and caring radiologist. “Her ability to perform superlative research in such a world renown institution such as the MAYO clinic, speaks volumes on both her own abilities as a physician and on the excellent level of training that Memorial’s medical school has provided her with. We are very proud of her and wish her much happiness and success in her postgraduate career in radiology at North Carolina.”

An international, interdisciplinary symposium on human dignity, narrative integrity and ethical decision-making at the end of life was held in St. John’s June 11-13. Organized by Dr. Daryl Pullman, Medical Ethics, with financial support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the symposium was organized as a workshop, and panelists prepared papers for circulation in advance of the symposium. The symposium itself consisted of brief presentations by authors followed by brief commentary and much open discussion.

Papers prepared for this symposium will be published (subject to peer review) in a special theme issue of the Journal of Palliative Care which will come out this fall in conjunction with the 15th World Congress on Palliative Care in Montreal.

Dr. Proton Rahman, associate professor of medicine at Memorial, has been named one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40 for 2003. The announcement appeared in the Globe & Mail on May 30, along with an accompanying feature article in Report on Business magazine.

As well as his university appointment, Dr. Rahman is a consultant rheumatologist for the Health Care Corporation of St. John's, chief scientific officer for Newfound Genomics, and a clinician scientist with a strong research interest in genetics and prognosis of rheumatic disease.

Dr. Jorge Segovia was awarded (posthumously) the Certificate of Merit, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Public Health Association at their awards luncheon June 14th.  The John Vanderkamp Prize was awarded to Dr. James Feehan, Economics, along with co-authors Dr. Glenn W. Harrison, Economics, University of South Carolina, Alison C. Edwards, medical researcher, Community Health, and Dr. Jorge Segovia, Communithy Health, for their paper, Cigarette Smoking and the Cost of Hospital and Physician Care, which appeared in the March 2003 issue of Canadian Public Policy. The Vanderkamp Prize is awarded by the Canadian Economics Association for the best paper in that journal.

Dr. Mike Woods, Genetics, has received a National Cancer Institute of Canada award of $70,000 for research on the identification of novel colon cancer genes.

Dr. George Yousef, a resident in Pathology, was chosen as the winner of the 2004 Canadian Research Award for Specialty Residents, Division of Medicine, for his manuscript titled Human kallikrein 5: A potential novel serum biomarker for breast and ovarian cancer. The award comes with a cash prize of $2,000, travel for himself and a companion to the college’s annual conference, and a certificate. The award will be presented Oct. 2 at the conference of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Dr. Terry-Lynn Young, Genetics, has received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award which provides salary support for five years.