The School of Kinesiology held its annual 2023-24 Student Leadership Recognition and Awards Breakfast on April 5, 2024 at the Jack Poole Hall, Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre. Student Engagement Officer, Emily Speidel hosted the event, featuring an address by the School’s Director, Robert Boushel.
These awards celebrate the exceptional contributions of Kinesiology students throughout the academic year, honoring their commitment to exceeding expectations in their roles. Recognitions are divided into three categories:
Community Engagement Award: Recognizing students who have invested significant time and effot into roles that positively impact the health and well-being of the individuals and communities they serve,
Student Experience Award: Recognizing students who have dedicated themselves to enhancing the holistic undergraduate experience within Kinesiology.
Qwasen Graduating Student Leadership Award: Recognizing graduating student leaders who have shown outstanding dedication and leadership through their roles within the School of Kinesiology or the KUS during their time at UBC.
Congratulations to all recipients! View the full list of award recipients.
School of Kinesiology Associate Professor, Dr. Eli Puterman, is among ten UBC faculty members who have been named by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) as new Fellows and new Members of the RSC College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists for 2023.
Dr. Puterman was announced by the RSC as a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. The College is the first of its kind in Canada, providing a system of multidisciplinary recognition for the emerging generation of Canadian intellectual leadership.
“It is an honour to be nominated to the RSC College and to be included in a cohort of experts seeking to advance an improved vision of Canada that resonates across so many fields of scientific and artistic explorations,” says Dr. Puterman. “I look forward to meeting many other Canadian leaders seeking to support the health and wellbeing of people across the country.”
Dr. Puterman will be welcomed to the 2023 class of new Members of the RSC College at the RSC Celebration of Excellence and Engagement ceremony in November.
Since 2015, Dr. Puterman has served as the Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Health. His research program develops and implements physical activity and exercise programs in collaboration with and for hard-to-reach and high-stress individuals to determine how such programs can improve mental and physical wellbeing.
Kinesiology Professor, Dr. Guy Faulkner has been elected into the Canadian Academy of Health Science (CAHS) for 2023.
Election to the Fellowship in the Academy is considered one of the highest honours for individuals in the Canadian health sciences community. Dr. Faulkner is among 48 new Fellows who are recognized by this honour for their rich and varied expertise.
“I would like to personally congratulate all the applicants that were elected as a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences for 2023. This recognition reflects their dedication and excellence in their field,” said Dr. Jan Sargeant, Chair of the CAHS Fellowship Committee. “We look forward to having their expertise further enrich the work of our Academy.”
Coupled with a broader research interest in public health, Dr. Faulkner’s research has focused on two inter-related themes: the development and evaluation of physical activity interventions; and physical activity and mental health. He was founding editor of the journal ‘Mental Health and Physical Activity’, which fosters the inter-disciplinary development of this research field. He led the development of, and currently coordinates, the Canadian Campus Wellbeing Survey, which is a health and wellbeing surveillance platform for the postsecondary sector.
Broadly speaking, our lab examines cellular mechanisms controlling the malleable nature of both skeletal muscles and adipose tissues, two organs important for modulating energy consumption and storage. In particular, we are interested in how histones, the proteins that help package our DNA neatly inside of the nucleus, regulate gene programs important for determining muscle/adipose development and metabolism, including adaptations to exercise training and perturbations in energy balance. We use numerous cellular and molecular techniques, coupled with deep metabolic phenotyping, to tease apart how post-translational modifications to histones impact these variables in the context of health and disease. Our work spans numerous levels of investigation, from cell, tissue, to whole organism.
Potential Students
Enthusiastic and team-oriented undergraduate and graduates students are encouraged to contact me at the address above. I am deeply committed to building and fostering an equitable, diverse, and inclusive research team and lab environment, where trainees feel comfortable and supported pursuing their goals and ideas. I strongly encourage members of underrepresented groups, including (but not limited to) racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, and persons with disabilities to apply within.
UBC’s School of Kinesiology is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Daniel Gamu as an assistant professor in Energy Metabolism, Exercise and Health.
Dr. Gamu joins the School following a postdoctoral fellowship awarded through Michael Smith Health Research in BC in the lab of Dr. William T. Gibson at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. There, he studied how the development and functional adaptations of brown and beige adipose tissue, two types of fat uniquely specialized for energy expenditure, are regulated by epigenetic processes important for chromatin packaging and gene expression. Dr. Gamu’s work also aims to uncover how such epigenetic machinery is involved in fundamental aspects of skeletal muscle biology, including coordinating physiological adaptations to various types of exercise, and muscle disease.
Dr. Gamu received his MSc and PhD degrees in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo, where he studied how skeletal muscle Ca2+ handling contributes to muscle and whole-body energy expenditure, including its pathophysiological role in metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes.
Dr. Gamu will begin his new role at the School on July 1, 2023.
How are humans able to acquire, retain, and adapt a seemingly limitless repertoire of skilled movements across the lifespan? Our lab aims to address this question and thereby shed light on fundamental principles of learning and memory in the healthy and diseased human motor system. Towards this aim, we combine theory with motor psychophysics, computational modeling, and patient testing. Our research into motor learning focuses on the control of goal-directed reaching, an ideal model system to understand interactions between cognition and action given that reaching involves high-level decision-making and low-level automatic processes.
