SFU Graduate Studies

Congratulations to Deyar Asmaro (above, with his mother at right), who received a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship this summer from Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his upcoming PhD research: Out of sight, out of mind: Do electrophysiological markers elicited by nicotine-related visual cues predict relapse in a sample of adult smokers?

Deyar’s master’s thesis examined  the brains of marijuana addicts and his PhD research will examine the brains of nicotine addicts who are trying to quit. As we know, tobacco is the number one cause of preventable death in the world today, exceeding the number of annual deaths from car accidents, suicide, murder, AIDS, and illicit drug use combined. He hopes that his research will lead to a better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying tobacco addiction, which will lead to more effective intervention and prevention programs. All of his research work has been in SFU’s Department of Psychology, as part of Dr. Mario Liotti’s Affective and Developmental Neuroscience Lab.

This isn’t Deyar’s first award by far. As an undergraduate, he received the 2008 Terry Fox Gold Medal and as a master’s student, he received a Arthur and Ancie Fouks Graduate Entrance Scholarship in Public Service and a Fredrick Banting and Charles Best Master Award. He’s also a world-class expert in martial arts.

Scans may help pinpoint addiction centres in the brain

• Deyar’s profile in the Affective and Developmental Neuroscience Lab, SFU Department of Psychology
• Master’s Thesis: The neural correlates of marijuana addiction: Differences in the processing of drug-related and emotional pictures between addicted versus healthy controls
• SFU Release: Overcoming effects of bullying earns Terry Fox medal
• The Province: Special Mentor Helped Rescue Troubled Teen

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Barbara Lindenberg will be presenting her final MFA dance project for the School for the Contemporary Arts on August 18, 2011, 8 pm, at the WISE Hall in Vancouver. Admission is by donation.

A Thousand Mountains brings Barbara Lindenberg’s choreography to the charming dancefloor of Vancouver’s Wise Hall. From unsettlingly silent lip-synching to slow motion depictions of crowd surfing, each dance creates a world on its own and in relation to others. Best performed in informal environments, Barbara’s dances are short events of a depictive nature. These highly accessible works present a synthesis of simplicity, complexity, absurdity, and optimism.

Barbara Lindenberg is a choreographer/performer who creates contemporary dance for the stage as well as site-specific works. She had the pleasure of carrying forward research and creation as a guest with the Amsterdam Master of Choreography (AMCh) at the Amsterdamse Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten this past spring/summer.

She has worked with songwriters and composers including Jennifer Castle, Dave Chokroun, Eric Chenaux, John Sherlock, Dale Morningstar, Jason Benoit, Jonathan Adjemian, Taylor Rankin and Michael Overton. While she most often creates and performs her own choreography she has also performed dances by Marie France Forcier, Learie McNicolls, Megan English, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Hope Terry, Magali Charrier, Sara Porter, Denise Duric, Allen Kaeja and others.

Her dances have been presented by Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Just for Laughs Street Festival (Toronto), Fringe Shanghai, Series 808 Season Finale, AWOL Gallery’s wHole exhibition, Lab Cabaret, A Month of Sundays, Au Revoir Darling, and Up Darling. Barbara has also presented sets of dances independently at a variety of informal venues in Vancouver and Toronto.

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Michael Steger, a PhD student in Mike Thewalt’s Semiconductor Spectroscopy Lab in SFU’s Department of Physics, has had a great year using optical spectroscopy to study the fundamental properties of semiconductors.

His research into highly isotopically enriched silicon, which enables optical spectroscopy at much higher resolution than natural silicon, led him to become first author on an invited paper presented at the International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors in Seoul. This paper describes a novel method for studying nuclear spins in silicon, which might lead to a new approach for a silicon-based quantum computer.

Michael has also just wrapped up an invited review for the Journal of Applied Physics, which will form the core of his PhD thesis. This work describes a new technique of ‘isotopic fingerprints,’ which has led to a surprising reevaluation of what were thought to be very well known luminescent defect centers in silicon.

Michael is also a budding entrepreneur. In his free time, he developed PhotoPosterMaker, a tool to quickly make professional collages out of photos. It’s now available for sale in the Mac App Store.

• Semiconductor Spectroscopy Lab
• Links to Mike Steger’s published papers
• PhotoPosterMaker for Mac

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Congratulations to Michel Trottier-McDonald, who has received an Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholarship (NSERC) for $105,000 to support his PhD program in high energy physics at SFU’s Department of Physics.

Michel has been involved for the last three years in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. His work is aimed at finding experimental evidence of the mechanism that gives mass to the fundamental particles making all the matter in the Universe. The favorite explanation is called the Higgs mechanism, and particle physicists have been on the hunt for many decades to find its elusive manifestation: the Higgs boson.

With the ever increasing amount of data collected by the ATLAS detector, it is becoming clear that the hunt for the Higgs boson is coming close to an end. Within a year or so, particle physicists should be able to tell if the Higgs mechanism is real or not.

Michel works on developing new techniques in order to increase the sensitivity of the search for the Higgs boson. For this, he is testing the limit of what the ATLAS detector can see. There is a chance that such techniques enable him and the ATLAS collaboration to see the Higgs before anyone else.

• ATLAS collaboration
• Physics Department, SFU
• High Energy Physics Group
• Michel’s Facebook page
• Michel’s blog: The Large Idea Collider
• Michel’s musical project: Motionthink

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Convocation brings many inspirational stories of growth and excellence despite early challenges.

Dr. Rob McTavish was a problem student as a child, and had been kicked out of seven elementary schools by grade 5. He attended three high schools and was expelled four times before quitting to join the Canadian army. He did well in military courses and then joined SFU’s Centre for Online and Distance education, rising through the ranks to become a distance education program director.

And this week, he will receive his PhD in educational psychology from Simon Fraser University, after receiving his high school diploma just a few months ago, as he discusses in his video above.

His inspirational story is being shared with other children by his former teacher, and Rob is hoping to continue to help support kids, including his own two boys, to have better school experiences.

• Vancouver Sun: “PhD achieves his goals despite school struggles”
• Surrey Leader: “How to Succeed in School”
• SFU press release: ‘Problem child’ grad triumphs
• Centre for Online and Distance Education program directors
• SFU 1997 press release: Grad sees virtual learning take off

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Congratulations to Doug Blackley, one of this year’s recipients of a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for his work in SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA).

This isn’t his first award by far: he’s received Leo and Sterling awards as well as nominations for Dora, AMPIA and the West Coast Music Awards for his musical compositions for film and the theatre. (The Leo was for the NFB documentary Tokyo Girls, in collaboration with SCA alumna Penelope Buitenhuis.)

Doug is focusing on music composition within the MFA program.  He writes:

After years of working with many different musical sounds, I think it is time to really spend time with notes, chords, melody, harmony, and musical form, all unadorned with timbral colours. As such, I am working with music for the piano.  I am primarily interested in a twentieth and 21st century harmonic palette.  I am interested in composition primarily, but an essential tool for composition remains a study of music theory.  I am paying attention right now to the writings of György Sándor Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, and Karel Janecek.

The MFA has many attractions that seductively beckon my attention. I’d like to spend some time paying attention to current state (and background) of the visual arts.  I’d like to paint some more; the “collaboration class” offered me the opportunity to create a painting with a classmate. I’d like to spend more time looking at Max/msp and other methods of new music/media production.  I’d like to find out what’s really going on today in photography. So many things, so little time.

• Doug Blackley’s website (includes some video demos of his work)
• IMDB: Doug Blackley’s credits
• LinkedIn: Doug Blackley
• School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU

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Congratulations to Jessica C. Selinger, who has received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for $150,000 to support her PhD program in the Locomotion Lab, Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology.

Jessica researches the fundamental principles that underlie the neuronal control of legged locomotion. Her research at SFU will be focused on developing a myoelectric control system for a knee-mounted biomechanical energy harvester, an extension of an existing Locomotion Lab project that can generate storable electricity from the natural motion of walking.

Her goal is to control the device with sensors that measure the electrical activity of the user’s contracting muscles. This proposed control system has the potential to harvest additional energy from the body, be more comfortable for the user, and be adaptable to changing environments and movements.

Advances in energy harvesting technology could revolutionize the meaning of portable power. The restricting weight and limited working time of battery power can be overcome by granting humans the ability to serve as their own renewable power source. The applications for such a device are vast—from powering vital communication equipment for soldiers and rescue workers to powering medical devices such as drug-pumps and prostheses.

• Locomotion Lab
• Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology

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Abhishek (Abhi) Nanjundappa is a PhD student at SFU’s Surrey campus, studying mechatronics systems engineering (MSE). He’s collaborating with industry partner Ballard Power Systems and his PhD research focuses on the development of new simulation tools for next generation PEM fuel cell systems. This line of research could potentially result in a major scientific breakthrough towards the development of cost-effective fuel cell systems with improved performance and durability.

Abhi received his first mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree in Bangalore, India, and his Master’s degree in computational and experimental turbulence from the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, with research based at the German Aerospace Center, Gottingen.

He’s well-travelled, and he believes in contributing to his community. He’s a student representative in the Engineering Graduate Student Association at SFU, and this June, he’ll also participating in a heroic fundraising effort to contribute to the Canadian community — he’ll be cycling on the Ride2Survive from Kelowna to Vancouver in one day, to help raise funds for the Canadian Cancer Society.

It’s a punishing effort, covering two mountain passes and cycling on the Coquihalla. The riders pay their own way to do it, so that all of the funds they raise go to cancer research, nothing to adminstrative costs. If you’d like to donate a few dollars towards his fundraising goal (and get a tax-deductible receipt), please visit his fundraising page at the Canadian Cancer society.

He’s doing this to help eradicate cancer as well improve the quality of life for those already affected by cancer.

• Abhi’s LinkedIn profile
• Erik Kjeang Lab Team, Mechatronic Systems Engineering, School of Engineering Science
• Ride2Survive fundraising page

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Congratulations to Casey Wei, one of this year’s recipients of a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her work in SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

Casey Wei is an interdisciplinary artist working through a multi-genre approach of video, text, collage, installation, and music to explore the methods in which identity unfolds as a process of consuming other identities. She often places herself in the work as a performer and/or through diaristic means, weaving together a multiplicity of truths to destabilize any univocal understanding (and therefore complacency) of the art object. She is currently working on her thesis project tentatively titled, Murky Colors, a feature length experimental video/film.

Recent exhibitions include The Dark Arts: SFU MFA Spring Review, and I Could Be Wrong at the Audain Gallery. Other recent works include a performance of a collaged-monologue at Emily Carr’s Student Symposium: Liminal Positions in 2011, and “White Light,” a short story published in inter/tidal.iv, a literary journal.

• Casey’s blog: Nothing Reasons
• Georgia Straight review of Casey’s band: “Kick Evrything refuses to mellow on Stay In/Slow Now“
• Georgia Straight review: “The weirdness is compelling on Kick Evrything’s This I Is Demented and Possibly Deceased“
• Myspace: Kick Evrything

Kick Evrything – “WANNA DO” from Kick Evrything on Vimeo

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Joshua Tanenbaum is working on his PhD at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in the next year, and is enthusiastic about his experience at Simon Fraser University:

I came to graduate school after being inspired by the work of SIAT researchers at the SIGGRAPH conference. I’ve always had too many interests and hobbies and not enough time to focus on them; graduate school has allowed me to sharpen my skills as a designer, an artist, and a scholar.

In my five years here I have learned how to shape my interests into projects and ideas that are contributions to global research communities. Since coming to SFU I have made films, written music, designed games, created props and costumes, and developed new storytelling technologies. I have traveled around the world and interacted with some of the great minds in games, narrative, design, and technology.

This photo shows me as Captain Chronomek, my winning entry into the student design competition at this year’s Tangible and Embedded/Embodied Interactions conference. These days, when I’m not being a superhero, I am working on a project with the City of Vancouver to engage families in emergent dialogues about sustainability issues using a tabletop game that I helped design; editing a book on nonverbal communication in virtual worlds; co-chairing a conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling; and, lastly but most importantly, writing my dissertation.

He’s also the winner of the Office of Graduate Studies’ 40th Anniversary contest, and will be taking home an iPad 2 for this creative and fun winning contest entry.

• Joshua and Karen Tanenbaum’s website and blog: The Geek Movement
• EMIIE (Engage Me In Interactive Experiences) Lab profile
• MA Thesis: Believability, adaptivity, and performativity : Three lenses for the analysis of interactive storytelling
• CAT Games
• Current research: GRAND Greenest City Conversations Project
• YouTube: The Reading Glove
• Vancouver Observer: Technology and art captivate at Mini Maker Faire (with bonus interview on YouTube)
• The Express profile of Josh and Karen Tanenbaum on Youtube.

And last, but not least, on YouTube, the design process of Captain Chronomek!

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