Prof. Heidi Wendt won the 2021 Arts Distinction in Research Award. The prize is awarded annually by the Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) to a McGill faculty member who has made outstanding research contributions to her/his field. In 2016, Prof. Wendt published At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire with Oxford University Press. In her book, she examines evidence for the rise of self-authorized experts in specialized religious skills, rites, and wisdom under the Roman Empire.

Congratulations!

MusicFest Canada began in 1972 with a handful of Canadian musicians who created the country’s first jazz band festival. Now, in its 49th year, this small group has grown to embrace 4 Festival Divisions, the original Canadian Stage Band Festival Jazz Division, the Choral/Vocal Jazz Division(1981) the Concert Band Division (1986) and the Orchestra/String Division (2008).  MusicFest Canada — “The Nationals” — brings thousands of students and educators from across the country together, over a one-week period, to celebrate excellence in musical performance.  
 

In episode 1 of The ‘New Normal’ hosted by Dave Kaufman, Professor Saibal Ray highlights the successes and failures of the COVID-19 vaccine procurement and global distribution, compares Israel's effort to Canada's, and questions if Canada will want to do all that’s necessary to be prepared should similar incidents arise in the future.

In episode 2 of The ‘New Normal’ hosted by Dave Kaufman, Professor Lisa Cohen discusses how the shift to working from home that has been hastened by the Covid-19 pandemic, how the work from home phenomenon has been more disadvantageous to some members of society than others, and ways in which working at home has given us all more time to think about how to make our world a more equitable place.

Plant diseases don’t stop at national borders and miles of oceans don’t prevent their spread, either. That’s why plant disease surveillance, improved detection systems, and global predictive disease modeling are necessary to mitigate future disease outbreaks and protect the global food supply, according to a team of researchers in a new commentary published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations to Samira Sakhia (BCom’90, DPA’94, MBA’01), who will take on a new challenge as President and Chief Executive Officer of Knight Therapeutics Inc., a Montreal-based company focused on acquiring or in-licensing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products for Canada and Latin America. Sakhia brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry to the role.   

For decades scientists have been puzzled by the formation of rare hyper-enriched gold deposits in places like Ballarat in Australia, Serra Palada in Brazil, and Red Lake in Ontario. While such deposits typically form over tens to hundreds of thousands of years, these “ultrahigh-grade” deposits can form in years, month, or even days. So how do they form so quickly?