Six honored by Royal Society

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By Communications Staff
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The University of Western Ontario has had six more faculty selected as fellows in the Royal Society of Canada (RSC).
 
The RSC, now known as RSC: Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada, is the country’s oldest and most prestigious organization of scientists and scholars. The RSC is dedicated to encouraging education and the advancement of knowledge in the natural and social sciences and the humanities.
 
The 2009 fellows from Western include:
 
• Robert Batterman, Department of Philosophy
Batterman holds the Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science and cross-appointment with Applied Mathematics. Prior to moving to Western, he taught for 15 years in the Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University.
 
Batterman’s research interests include the foundations of statistical physics, dynamical systems and chaos, asymptotic reasoning, mathematical idealizations, the philosophy of applied mathematics, explanation, reduction, and emergence.
 
His current research straddles the border between philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. This topic concerns the role of mathematics in the formation and application of physical theories.
 
• John Bell, Department of Philosophy
A professor of Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, Bell was named the first (2006-07) Graham and Gail Wright Faculty of Arts Distinguished Scholar at the university. Prior to coming to Western in 1989, his teaching and research appointments included the London School of Economics, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National University of Singapore and the University of Padova.
 
Bell’s research interests include mathematical logic, philosophy of mathematics, set theory, Boolean algebras, lattice theory, and category theory. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Western.
 
• Russell Poole, Department of English
Poole’s research activities centre upon medieval topics, including the Icelandic sagas, skaldic poetry, ancestral beliefs and Christian conversion in Scandinavia, as well as the culture contacts between Scandinavians and the British Isles, Atlantic islands, Francia, and East Slavia.
 
The recipient of numerous honours including Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Humanities, the Snorri Sturluson Fellowship (University of Iceland) and the Claude McCarthy Fellowship, Poole’s current projects include investigating the legends of settlement and foundation in the Atlantic islands, editing and interpretation of skaldic poetry, and research into the relation between psycholinguistic theory and poetics.

• Paul Beamish, Richard Ivey School of Business
Beamish is a professor of International Business at Ivey. He is the author or co-author of over 100 articles or contributed chapters, and over 46 books in the areas of International Management and Strategic Management.
 
He has received best research awards from the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business and the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada.
 
Beamish has supervised 23 PhD dissertations, along with his consulting, management training, and joint venture facilitation activities in both the public and private sector. He is founding Director of Ivey’s Asian Management Institute, and in 2005 was appointed director of Ivey's Cross-Enterprise thrust on engaging emerging markets.

• Rajni Patel, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Patel holds the position of Distinguished University Professor and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Advanced Robotics and Control in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a cross appointment in the Department of Surgery in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
 
Patel also serves as Director of Engineering for CSTAR (Canadian Surgical Technologies & Advanced Robotics), a research program of the London Health Sciences Centre, the Lawson Health Research Institute and the university.
 
Patel has published over 300 papers in refereed journals and conferences in the areas of robotics (including medical and surgical robotics), haptics, systems and control, artificial neural networks and mechatronics.
 
• Wayne Nesbitt, Department of Earth Sciences
Nesbitt and his students study interactions between solutions and minerals. Since virtually all reactions occur at the mineral-fluid (gas or liquid) interface, the major thrust of the group is the study of interfaces, and especially the surfaces of minerals reacted with solutions.
 
Surface analytical techniques used routinely include Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).
 
Other research interests of Nesbitt’s include surface properties of pentlandite and its flotation properties; processes involved in weathering of a granite under arid conditions, and the origin of chemical variations in groundwaters from a small watershed in southwestern Ontario. 

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