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2000 winners of the Distinguished Academics Awards

Meet the winners and learn how their work is making an impact in the non-academic world, demonstrating the vitality of university-based research and scholarly activity.

The Distinguished Academics Awards promote the value of university research in advancing the public good. Nominees hail from various institutions and disciplines, often working in very different domains—yet they’re united by a passion for meaningful research that fuels our economy, democracy, and intellectual life.

WINNERS

  • Ehor Boyanowsky Academic of the Year Award

    Professor Reg Mitchell

    University of Victoria

    Reg Mitchell, a chemist at the University of Victoria, is well known in academic circles for his work in aromatic molecules. He is better known to generations of Victoria school children, however, as Dr. Zonk, the green-haired mad scientist who uses “stinks and bangs” to introduce young people to the wonders of science. Professor Mitchell received the Academic of the Year Award for his on-going contributions to the community as Dr. Zonk and for sharing his academic expertise with the community through science awareness projects and as a media commentator explaining chemistry to the general public.

  • Paz Buttedahl Career Achievement Award

    Dr. Bob Evans

    University of British Columbia

    Bob Evans, an economist at the University of British Columbia, received the Career Achievement Award for his lifelong contribution to the study of health care economics. Professor Evans is considered one of the founders of the field of health care economics and is the single most influential academic in Canadian health care policy. He has advised prime ministers, premiers and health ministers (both federal and provincial) on how and why the health care system works and what can be done to improve it. His international stature is attested to by his serving on panels reviewing the national health care systems in Sweden and Greece. Professor Evans has recently been working to shift public discussion away from a focus on health care towards a focus on health (of which health care is but one factor). He carries out this work through the Population Health Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.