A breakfast reception was held at the Château Versailles on February 5 to honour the Concordia University Research Fellows for 2001. Each will receive $5,000 and will give a public lecture this calendar year.

Irene F. Whittome

Irene F. Whittome is a distinguished artist who has set high standards for creative practice in the Faculty of Fine Arts. She has had many solo exhibitions, including a four-month retrospective last year at the Musée du Québec of 300 works made between 1963 and 1999, under the title Biofictions.

In 1998-99, Professor Whittome presented a series of installations at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Departure for Katsura: Irene F Whittome at the CCA. She has also been invited to join collections at Montreal’s Musée d’Art Contemporain and the Glenbow Museum.

Whittome’s work is poetic and evocative, exploring duplication, modification and resistance. She combines a range of scientific and cultural approaches, from Buddhist teachings to the implications of genetic engineering.

She has received many grants and prizes from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec. She was recently awarded the Prix de la Fondation Gershon Iskowitz for excellence in the visual arts, and in 1997 received Quebec’s most prestigious award, the Prix du Québec Paul-Émile Borduas pour les arts visuels.

She has been interviewed many times, and been on juries for art competitions and art councils. She is currently serving as a jury member for the architectural design for La Grande bibliothèque du Québec. Her work has been collected by all the major Canadian art museums, and has been exhibited in in England, France, Belgium, the U.S. and throught Canada, and has been acquired by many public and private collections around the world.

Since her arrival at Concordia in 1968, Professor Whittome has been a thesis supervisor and mentor to many students, shaping their subsequent careers in crucial ways. Her creative expertise and high recognition in the art world make her a fine role model for emerging artists.

Suong V. Hoa

Suong V. Hoa, who was also recently appointed Concordia University Chair in Materials in Composites, has extensive expertise in testing, design, evaluation and manufacturing processes of composite materials and structures research.

One of the main thrusts of Dr. Hoa’s work will be nanotechnology, leading to the development of nanocomposite materials. Another area of focus will be the mechanics of textile composites, and determining applications for these materials.

Dr. Suong V. Hoa came to Concordia in 1977 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He attained full professor status in 1986, and led the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 1994 to 1999. He has been Director of the Concordia Centre for Composites for the past seven years.

During his years with the Faculty, he has published three books, more than 250 articles, and was editor of eight conference proceedings. In 1988, he founded the Canadian Association for Composite Structures and Materials (CACSMA), and he is editor of the Journal of Science and Engineering of Composite Materials.

A Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME), Dr. Hoa also won CSME G.H. Medal in Materials in 1996 and the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Award in 1980. He has supervised 35 Master’s and PhD students to completion.

Over the years, Professor Hoa has worked with more than 50 companies in the field of materials and composites for research grants, contracts, and consulting activities.

Dr. Hoa has just given a keynote speech at the 2nd Engineering Technologies and Manufacturing Workshop in Toronto, and will be a speaker at the International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies (ICMAT 2001) in July in Singapore, at which eight Nobel laureates will give plenary lectures.