LFS Today Nov 17, 2020

Random Acts of Recognition

Congratulations to Random Acts of Recognition recipients:

Lewis Fausak, Applied Biology Education and Research Support, and Alex Kramer MSc student in Soil Science, soil pit diggers extraordinaire! They dug out a soil pit at the Totem Plant Science Field Station in record time and filmed several educational video clips at that soil pit. The video clips are to be used in couple of soil science courses during term 2.

To nominate a faculty member, staff or graduate student that’s been doing an outstanding job or has gone above and beyond in some way, send an email to lfs.recognition@ubc.ca and tell us why this person should be recognized. We’ll send them a $6 Starbucks gift card and acknowledge their good work in LFS Today.

MFRE Speaker Series – Today

Speaker: Dr. Matias Margulis, Assistant Professor, LFS/SPPGA
Topic: WTO, International Trade Negotiations and the Impacts of COVID-19
Date & Time: Tuesday, November 17, 10:30-11:30am
More info.

In this seminar, Dr. Margulis will cover the WTO, international trade negotiations on agriculture, and the impacts of COVID-19 on global food trade.

Event Link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/63198895621?pwd=TzlhTUdLMVlhR29WcVZSVFZjK0pKdz09

Meeting ID: 631 9889 5621
Passcode: 521521

Lunch & Learn Office Hours – Just Food Educational Resources

This session will be held on Friday, November 20th at noon.

Meryn Corkery and Rachel Cheang will be the guest presenters for this week’s Lunch & Learn Office Hours. Join Rachel and Meryn to explore the Just Food Educational Resources, resources that explore social justice issues by employing food as a pedagogical tool to connect theoretical understandings and terminology to elements of the day-to-day. The session will introduce you to the materials, provide suggestions on how to adapt them into your own courses and offer an opportunity to ask questions about the resources.

As always, join us with your questions and to discuss the Just Food Educational Resources.

To register for the session, please visit https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cscumsqDwrG9OI5NHXco_FeqnmI0pzdWM1

SOIL 500 Graduate Seminar Series

Date: Friday, November 20, 3:00pm
Title: Effects of elevated carbon dioxide in plant-insect interactions at multi-trophic levels
Speaker: Jimmy Ha, PhD student (supervisor Juli Carrillo)
Abstract & bio available here.

If you have registered previously for one of our seminars, you do not need to register again – the weekly zoom link is the same.
If you need registration information, please email sandra.brown@ubc.ca.

UBC United Way Pet Photo Contest

This is your chance to showcase your pet(s) to the UBC community!

UBC United Way is hosting its first-ever Pet Photo Contest. Submit a photo of your pet between November 9 –November 20 to be entered into our contest. Exciting prizes will be awarded to our top 3 contestants.
Don’t have a pet? We encourage you to participate by viewing our photo entries and voting for your favourites! (Voting begins November 23). All photo entries will be posted on our Flickr page.

For full contest details, please visit our website.

To enter the contest, please click here.

Conservation Spotlight Series

The second inaugural Conservation Spotlight Series is happening this Thursday from 2-3:30pm!

For those who missed the first session in October, this event series is a mini-conference where speakers from the Biodiversity Research Centre share how their research interacts with conservation. The intent is to showcase the spectrum of research conducted at UBC that ranges from being deeply embedded within conservation to being theoretical or empirical work that has implications for conservation, policy and management.

The structure is 2 rounds of lightning talks (5 minutes) followed by group discussion. This Thursday we are grateful for the following presenters who span five departments at UBC:

• Dr. Robin Naidoo (website)
• Roshni Mangar (@RoshniMangar)
• Dr. Amanda Liczner (@aliczner)
• Mairin Deith (@sapiensimulator)
• Dr. John Richardson (website)
• Harold Eyster (@HaroldEyster)

Wow, what an amazing group! We can’t wait to hear from them all and to hear your perspectives on research and conservation continuity at BRC & UBC.

Please join us this Thursday from 2-3:30pm (note the extended time). You can register at this Zoom link. If you have attended or registered for previous Conservation Discussion Group (CDG) meetings, you can use the same calendar link that you have already accessed.

CAAIN Open Competition

The Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network (CAAIN) has put out a funding call for their open competition. CAAIN is a platform to pursue precision, productivity and premiums in agriculture and food within an ecosystem of companies covering complete value chains (from soil through to consumer) and a network of living laboratories (i.e., smart farms). CAAIN funding will allow these groups to come together to develop research and/or innovation projects.

Documents and deadlines are available on their website.