Celebrate Research

Today I attended events being held for UBC's Celebrate Research. "Celebrating research touching lives and communities" was this year's focus for these celebrations.

A symposium presented by my Faculty was entitled "Controlling the Spread of HIV/AIDS: The African Challenge." A lot of intriguing ideas were brought forward by a diverse group of guests. Ms. Toun Ilumoka, a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Law, spoke about how making inroads into the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa requires giving those nations the power to make decisions for their people. She suggested that power at a national or civic level is not helpful due to the struggles of the developing world, but that at the community level people need to be empowered to make the decisions that affect themselves. Dr. Deborah Burgess of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spoke of the challenges of developing and making available reliable and applicable diagnostic equipment, specifically for use in developing countries. Dr. Julio Montaner of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS closed the symposium that ran severely overtime. He presented a compelling set of data that showed HAART therapy to be effective and if implemented more extensively would lead to controlling the spread of the virus and its eventual eradication. He likened the investment to fund the widespread use of HAART in BC to be the mortgage down payment that needs to be made; to not make this investment is the unethical refusal to control HIV/AIDS, leading to unnecessary victims and extraordinary healthcare costs far into the future.

In the Celebrate Reseach Gala this evening, the over 400 researchers from or associated UBC that have received awards or recognition over the past year were officially celebrated by the university. The long program of award presentations was broken up by performances by the UBC Opera; an excerpt from the CBC documentary profiling Jasper Wood, "The Maritime Violin"; and the University Singers.