Class of 2017: Karen Tang, David Campbell, Lauren Doyle, Una Yu Po Chow honoured for academic excellence

Two doctoral and two master’s graduates received medals at the University of Calgary's convocation Nov. 10, in recognition of their extraordinary academic achievements.

Governor General’s Gold Medals

The Governor General’s Gold Medal is awarded to two students: one at the master’s level and one at the doctoral level. The 2017 medals are both going to outstanding graduates of the Community Health Sciences program at the Cumming School of Medicine. Dr. Karen Tang is the winner of this year’s Governor General’s Gold Medal at the master’s level, while her colleague Dr. David Campbell is the winner of the Gold Medal at the doctoral level.

Tang and Campbell both pursued research focusing on different aspects of patient self-perception as a factor in health. Under the supervision of Dr. William Ghali, Tang’s research focuses on whether an individual’s perception of their own social status increases the risk for cardiovascular disease. Tang, who completed her MD degree before starting her graduate program, is hoping her research will help identify and address barriers to health care faced by people who self-identify as having lower social status.

Campbell’s doctoral research takes a similar approach to Tang’s, but instead asks if patients who have diabetes and heart disease who face financial barriers have worse outcomes than those who don’t face financial barriers. Campbell notes that financial barriers aren’t always a function of lower income; people from all income brackets may face financial burdens that could translate as financial barriers. Campbell, who completed his degree under Dr. Braden Manns, is currently a Clinical Fellow in endocrinology and metabolism and will be doing post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto.

Chancellor’s Graduate Medals

The Chancellor’s Graduate Medals are also given to outstanding students graduating from doctoral and master’s programs. This year’s winners of the Chancellor’s Graduate Medals are Lauren Doyle (PhD) and Una Yu Po Chow (master’s).

Doyle is a graduate of the doctoral program in chemistry, and attended UCalgary specifically to work with Warren Piers in organometallic chemistry. Her graduate work explored a new approach to breaking down nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, into harmless components by using a metal compound as a catalyst. This process uses far less energy than other methods of converting nitrous oxide, and can take place at room temperature. After completing her degree earlier this year, Doyle went on to a position as a synthetic chemist at Intel Corp, a tech giant that makes processors and other computer components.

A graduate of the master’s program in linguistics, Chow completed a master’s project bringing together her interests in linguistics and computer science — two areas in which she holds bachelor’s degrees. In her graduate work, Chow worked under Steve Winters to develop a computational model that could classify statements and questions in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, based solely on intonation. The comparative performances between the model and humans in classifying the same sets of sentences provide insight into how human listeners mentally process variations in intonation. A winner of a SSHRC doctoral scholarship, Chow now plans to pursue a PhD.

Medals celebrate academic excellence

The Governor General’s Academic Medal was first awarded in 1873 by the Earl of Dufferin, and has since become one of the most prestigious awards that a student in a Canadian educational institution may receive. With this award, the Governor General of Canada continues the tradition of encouraging outstanding scholarship across the nation.

The Chancellor’s Graduate Medal was established to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of the chancellors of the University of Calgary. These awards celebrate academic excellence at the University of Calgary.