English Prof wins Killam Prize

University Professor Linda Hutcheon of English and comparative literature is one of five winners of the 2005 Killam Prizes. The $100,000 prizes, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, are the country’s highest recognition for outstanding academic-career achievement in engineering, natural sciences, health sciences, social sciences and the humanities. Also announced were the Killam research fellowships. Professor Virginia Brown of the Centre for Medieval Studies is one of seven Canadian scholars to win the two-year prize for 2005. Professors Barbara Sherwood Lollar of geology and Lynne Viola of history had their fellowships renewed for a second year.

Dwayne Shirley (BASc 2001, MASc 2003), a doctoral candidate with the Faculty of Engineering, has won the 2004 Mike Shinn Distinguished Member of the Year Award from the U.S.-based National Society of Black Engineers. Shirley, 27, is the first Canadian recipient of the award, which recognizes academic and professional excellence in engineering along with community leadership.

Bruce Kidd, dean of the Faculty of Physical Education and Health, has received the Canadian Olympic Order for outstanding contribution to the Olympic movement in Canada. Kidd was a distance runner in the 1964 Olympic Games.

Professors Roberto Abraham of astronomy and astrophysics and Peter Zandstra of the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering are among the six winners of this year’s prestigious Steacie fellowships, awarded each year by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council to Canada’s leading university scientists or engineers. Abraham studies the universe’s first galaxies. Zandstra, the Mary Gertrude l’Anson Professor of Tissue Engineering and a Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Bioengineering, conducts research into mouse embryonic stem cells.

Edona Besnik Çaku, a student in medical radiation sciences, is the winner of the 2005 New Pioneers Youth Award, which recognizes contributions made by immigrants and refugees in the Greater Toronto Area. Çaku, 19, founded the Friends of Albania Student Association to undertake humanitarian projects in her home country.