Contours Winter 2012

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F A C U L T Y

O F

S C I E N C E

A L U M N I

VOLUME 27, No 2, WINTER 2012

Geek-wise

How to own a techwave circa 1985

Darwin at velocity

Species intervention on a wafer

The inventiveness factor

Gerry Darichuk on opportunity

storm The gathering

Space weather and cloud computing

M A G A Z I N E

www.science.ualberta.ca

message from the dean For many of you, there is an unfamiliar face staring back at you. My name is Jonathan Schaeffer. I am a professor in the Department of Computing Science and, as of July first, the new Dean of the Faculty of Science. Gregory Taylor, my predecessor, stepped down after ten years on the job. Gregory did an amazing job, with the new Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science being the most visible testimonial to his efforts.

My first few months on the job have been incredibly rewarding. I am finding out about all the great work in the Faculty of Science, whether honoring two new Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, celebrating another 3M Teaching Award winner, recognizing our role in discovering the Higgs boson, hearing about breakthroughs in nanotechnology, or finding new species of dinosaurs. The quality and quantity of our research is truly amazing. Our Faculty exemplifies excellence at every level: our undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, support staff, instructors, professors and, of course, alumni. For me, working with such a talented group of people is like winning the lottery.

We’re all grateful for this opportunity to share the stories of how we’re all growing and embracing new opportunities. The Faculty of Science continues to be at the leading edge of

technology. For example, we are moving into the brave new world of online learning. In a partnership with Silicon Valley startup Udacity, we will be offering Faculty of Science courses to the world for free in 2013. Stay tuned!

In this issue, we’re looking at technology as a game-changer from a few different perspectives.

For example, we’re taking a closer look at a cloud computing collaboration to advance our space weather research. We also checked in with some of our ’86-’87 computer science alumni who rode and crested the high-tech wave of the ‘90’s. We also visited Gerry Darichuk (BSc. ’68), once a run-away orphan who worked his way through the U of A to become first a teacher, then an entrepreneur, and now an international philanthropist.

Do you have an interesting story? I would love to hear it. Please contact me at dean.science@ ualberta.ca.

If you want to find out more about the Faculty of Science, please visit our web site (www.science. ualberta.ca). To find out more about me and my life as Dean, you can find my blog here (www. jonathanschaeffer.blogspot.ca).

Jonathan Schaeffer Dean of Science

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Science Contours is published twice a year by the Faculty of Science Office to provide current information on the many activities of Faculty and alumni.

The magazine is distributed to alumni and friends of the faculty.

Dean of Science Jonathan Schaeffer Editor Sandra Robertson Graphic Design Studio X Design & Illustration Contributing writers Caitlin Crawshaw, Omar Mouallem, Brian Murphy, Michel Proulx, Sandy Robertson, Scott Rollans Photography Bela Baliko, Sarah Beck, Chris Bolin, Simon Greig, Edmonton Journal, John England, Joshua Miller, Don Page, Richard Siemens, John Ulan

Send your comments to: The Editor, Science Contours Faculty of Science 6-197 CCIS, University of Alberta Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E9 Tel: 780.492.6226 Fax: 780.492.9434 Toll-free: 800.358.8314 E-mail: contours.science@ualberta.ca Website: www.science.ualberta.ca Publications Mail Agreement No: 40063605

/UofAScience @ualbertaScience

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contents 4 16

8 science bases

features

4 Science in the News

7-11 Science icons named

The MOOC revolution, 585 million year-old slug-cousins, Martian secrets and U of A’s role in the big Higgs boson discovery . . . Find out more about what’s made the news.

You can also follow our news on Facebook (www.facebook.com/UofAScience) and on Twitter, @ualbertaScience.

as Fellows to the prestigious Royal Society of Canada for their outstanding scholarly and scientific achievements, John Acorn (BSc ’80, MSc ’88), Dr. John England and Dr. Don Page.

12 Space Weather and Cloud Computing

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15 Meet our

A new forecast for science

distinguished alumni for 2012

13 Ahead of the storm

16 The starts, stops and

Alumnus John Shillington brings Cybera’s computing edge to big research problems

shifts of ‘The Geeks’ circa 1985

The serious(ly fun) business of riding a high-tech wave

20 Chips off the Old Block

Nanoscience does the heavy lifting in identifying genetic traits that may save iconic species

23 Self-made man

Living the dream, U of A science grad Gerry Darichuk on entrepreneurship and giving back

cover story

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The gathering storm: Space Weather and Cloud Computing

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o S C I E N C E IN THE NEWS

Cracking a superbug’s armour There’s new hope for development of an antibiotic that can put down a lethal “superbug” bacteria linked to the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients around the world, including a recent case at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Researchers from the University of Alberta-based Alberta Glycomics Centre found a chink in the molecular armour of the pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii. The bacteria first appeared in the 1970s and in the last decade it has developed a resistance to most antibiotics.

Mario Feldman (biological sciences) identified a mechanism that allows Acinetobacter baumannii to cover its surface with molecules known as glycoproteins. That led the researchers to another discovery. “If the superbug cannot produce glycoproteins they become less virulent and less capable of forming biofilms,” said Feldman. “The biofilm protects the bacteria from antibiotics.”

Acinetobacter baumannii is a particularly insidious and contagious pathogenic bacteria that has plagued hospitals around the world. It spreads from one person to another by physical contact. The bacteria can live on hard surfaces for several days and can cling to hospital equipment like catheter tubes and inhalers. Acinetobacter infection is also spread by coughing and sneezing.

Hospital patients whose immune systems are already worn down are the most susceptible to the bacteria. It infects wounds and can spread to the lungs, blood and brain.

(L to R) University of Alberta graduate students Brent Weber and Jeremy Iwashkiw with lead researcher Mario Feldman.

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Shedding new light on the sun The U of A and University of Oslo are developing new exchange programs for as many as 20 undergraduates and PhD candidates who will find new ways to investigate the sun’s effects on Earth’s weather and climate.

“We want to take students beyond our existing knowledge of how the sun influences our planet,” said Ian Mann (physics), who will lead the Canadian half of the program. “Within ten years, our aim is that these researchers will produce nano-satellite technology to measure the sun’s effects on the Earth.”

The two universities already have an established space technology exchange program that sees Canadian students travel to the coast of Norway to launch sounding rockets to altitudes of 10 kilometres.

The success of that program, now two years into a three-year agreement, convinced the University of Oslo’s Jøran Moen to expand the U of A relationship by investing nearly C$350,000 in the new joint education and research initiative.

The Norwegians are developing cube satellites, small Earth orbiters that are relatively cheap to build and launch, which Mann says will be part of both universities’ long-term space research plans.

Chris Herd

Meteorite delivers Martian secrets A meteorite that landed in the Moroccan desert 14 months ago is providing more information about Mars, the planet where it originated.

Chris Herd (earth and atmospheric sciences) helped in the study of the Tissint meteorite, in which traces of Mars’ unique atmosphere are trapped.

“Our team matched traces of gases found inside the Tissint meteorite with samples of Mars’ atmosphere collected in 1976 by Viking, NASA’s Mars lander mission,” said Herd. Herd explained that the meteorite started out 600 million years

New super-cool physics at U of A U of A physicist John P. Davis has officially made Edmonton the coldest place in Canada – even in summer. The Department of Physics’ low-temperature quantum nanoscience laboratory, now home to two huge super refrigerators, has started cooling molecules to just a few millikelvin above absolute zero, the theoretical limit of coldness at which matter contains no thermal energy. In these frigid temperatures, the world works in ways we can’t imagine. “As you get colder, you reduce the background thermal environment and new physics is revealed,” says Davis.

For example, the superfluidity of helium occurs when it’s cooled to just a few degrees above absolute zero. The gas’ behavior in those conditions– like scaling the walls of containers and seeping through extremely tiny holes - can’t be described by classical physics models. Rather, superfluidity can only be described by quantum

ago as a fairly typical volcanic rock on the surface of Mars, until it was launched off the planet by the impact of an asteroid.

“At the instant of that impact with Mars, a shock wave shot through the rock,” said Herd.

“Cracks and fissures within the rock were sealed instantly by the heat, trapping components of Mars’ atmosphere inside, and forming black, glassy spots.”

The team estimates that for a period of between 700,000 and one million years the rock floated through outer space, until July 2011 when

it streaked through Earth’s atmosphere to land in Morocco.

Herd says the key reason this meteorite is so important is that it was picked up just a few months after landing and was not subjected to weathering or contamination on this planet.

The rock’s Martian weathering involved water, which means water was present on the surface of Mars within the past few hundred million years.

But Herd says this meteorite sample does not carry any evidence that the water supported any life forms.

mechanics, a branch of physics that describes things such as the behaviour of individual particles.

The potential breakthroughs from observing these new behaviours could have real-world implications for things like superconductors, materials that allow electricity to pass through them with zero resistance. An unfortunate attribute of these conductors is that they only function at extremely cold temperatures, which is an expensive environment to maintain. A superconductor that could operate without having to be cooled down would mean a big leap forward in energy transmission.

Davis says room-temperature superconductors are the ‘Holy Grail’ of physics, and he hopes understanding this science at low temperatures can translate into a comprehensive theory that would apply at any temperature.

John Davis

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o S C I E N C E IN THE NEWS

A Mass-ive Discovery

(L to R) Martin Ferguson-Pell, acting provost and vice-president (academic); Jonathan Schaeffer, Dean of Science; Sebastian Thrun, CEO and co-founder of Udacity; Jennifer Chesney, associate vicepresident (university digital strategy).

Big step towards online learning Education and machine learning researchers at the University of Alberta are joining forces with leading online education provider Udacity to further develop and refine methods for delivering academic courses online.

The U of A and Udacity signed a memorandum of understanding today that begins a research partnership for the collaborative development of systems for delivery, measurement and assessment of online learning courses and experiences.

Researchers from the university’s Alberta Innovates Centre for Machine Learning— one of the world’s top five machine learning institutes—and from the faculties of education and science will join others across campus with expertise in online learning technologies and pedagogy to work with Udacity.

“I very much look forward to working with the U of A,” said Udacity CEO and founder Sebastian Thrun, who joined Ferguson-Pell in signing the MOU. “The faculty at the U of A have a strong commitment to data-driven research for online education, and Udacity is excited to build on U of A’s expertise in online testing and education. We also share a joint commitment to excellence and radical innovation in online education.”

In addition, the partnership calls for a pilot project to develop a few courses in the Faculty of Science that will be offered through the Udacity platform, with the expectation that at least one course can be taken for University of Alberta credit, which would set the U of A apart from all other Canadian universities.

Ancient fossil discovery University of Alberta researchers have uncovered physical proof that animals existed 585 million years ago—30 million years earlier than previous records show.

The discovery was made by U of A geologists Ernesto Pecoits and Natalie Aubet in Uruguay. They found fossilized tracks a centimetre-long, slug-like animal left behind 585 million years ago in silty, shallow-water sediment.

A team of U of A researchers determined that the tracks were made by a primitive animal called a bilaterian, which is distinguished from other non-animal, simple life forms by its symmetry—its top side is distinguishable from its bottom side—and a unique set of “footprints.”

Murray Gingras (earth and atmo6

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spheric sciences) says fossilized tracks indicate that the soft-bodied animal’s musculature enabled it to move through the sediment on the shallow ocean floor.

“The pattern of movement indicates an evolutionary adaptation to search for food, which would have been organic material in the sediment,” he said.

There were no fossilized remains of a bilaterian’s body, just its tracks. “Generally when we find tracks of a soft-bodied animal, it means there’s no trace of the body because they fossilize under different conditions,” said Gingras. “It’s usually just the body or just the tracks, not both.”

Before the U of A bilaterian find, the oldest sign of animal life was dated at 555 million years ago from a find made in Russia.

This past July, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland, revealed a new subatomic particle that they believe is the elusive Higgs boson—the key to understanding why there is life in the universe.

Researchers at the U of A were heavily involved in the construction and installation of the ATLAS detector, one of two detectors that independently observed that mystery particle.

Over the years professors James Pinfold, Doug Gingrich and Roger Moore, as well as members of their particle physics group, have spent countless hours working on design, construction and data analysis on the U of A campus and have made dozens of trips to CERN to install equipment, run beam tests and take results directly from the ATLAS detector.

Although there is much work still to be done in determining the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe, the magnitude of the discovery is immense, especially for those who have been intimately involved in the project from the beginning. “This is a moment particle physics has been waiting for,” says Gingrich. “It renews the dream many of us first had 20 years ago when we set out to discover the Higgs boson. The page turns, as we now proceed to study the properties of this new particle and determine its true identity.”

John Acorn

wins Royal Society of Canada medal for promoting science

John Acorn (BSc ’80, MSc ’88) has won the 2012 Royal Society of Canada’s McNeil Medal, awarded for outstanding ability to promote and communicate science to students and the public within Canada.

It’s the latest acknowledgement of Acorn’s work to promote science and share his passion for nature, and insects in particular, to a general audience. In 2008, he won NSERC’s Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion and in 1998, he was the recipient of the ASTech Award for Excellence in Science and Technology Journalism. Despite the previous awards, Acorn said he was “tremendously” surprised when told he won this one.

Acorn is best known as the host and creative force of Acorn, the Nature Nut, an award winning television series that was produced in Edmonton and ran for seven seasons on a variety of networks including CTV, PBS, Discovery Canada and Animal Planet, among others.

What pleased Acorn most about this award was that the nomination, which he only saw after being told he won, focused more on his work as an author, especially those books published by the University of Alberta Press.

Acorn has written 16 books so far, including a wide variety of field guides such as Tiger Beetles of Alberta,Compact Guide to Alberta Birds and Bugs of Northern California, and children’s book about dinosaurs. He is currently working on another field guide, expected to come out in 2013, about butterflies in eastern Canada.

“When someone says, ‘I got your book and I just want to get out there and chase ladybugs or tiger beetles or whatever,’ that’s the thing that really makes me happy,” he said. “Enthusiasm is contagious,” he said. “It’s at least as important as the subject matter.”

And yet, when Acorn was an undergraduate student, there was no indication he’d take the career path on which he ended up.

“I was a hardcore biology nerd,” he said. But then he got a summer job as an interpreter at Sir Winston Churchill Provincial Park near Lac la Biche and in an instant, the showman in him, the one that compelled him to make movies and record songs with his friends as a teenager, had found

the perfect outlet.

“The other thing that was really important was some of the books that I read when I was as young.” He read Edwin Way Teale, a Pulitzer-prize winning nature writer, who wrote in the literary tradition of Jean-Henri Fabre. Considered the father of entomology, Fabre wrote about the lives of insects using the biographical form rather than the more traditional, clinically detached style.

“I just loved the tone, they were inspiring to me,” said Acorn. “I wanted to develop something like that. The effect on me was to really romanticize the whole process of studying nature and in particular studying insects. That was the stuff that inspired me when I was young.” Through the years, Acorn kept notes on his field trips, lots of notes, in which he would practice an inspiring style.

Looks like it worked out pretty well.

John Acorn

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View of an iceberg entrapped in the sea ice of outer Ekalugad Fiord, eastern Baffin Island, Nunavut. Taken in June 1967 while surveying the glacial and sea level history during England’s final undergraduate year.

Royal Society of Canada FELLOW

John England

Scholar and a steward of the North

John England

As the University of Alberta’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences celebrates its 100th year, one of its longest-serving professors is looking back on his 50 years of Arctic research.

It was 1965 when U of A professor emeritus John England first set boots down on the tundra of Canada’s far north. He says the opportunity changed his life.

“Talk about Elijah being taken away on a fiery chariot, that was me going to the Arctic,” he said.

England was a first-year geography student at the University of Windsor when a three-month field trip to Baffin Island set in motion an eventual doctorate at the University of Colorado, a faculty position at the U of A, breakthrough research and countless memorable moments with colleagues 8

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and graduate students.

England’s research focused on the Arctic’s environmental variability, which he measured by hiking thousands of kilometres of coastline across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as well as northwest Greenland.

Through the years, England and a revolving team of graduate students put together a diverse record of environmental change in the Arctic, including the history of former ice sheets, related sea level changes and lake and ocean cores.

“In the summer of 2008 I sat on the coast of

View of Mount Nares, outer Hazen Plateau, northeastern Ellesmere Island, taken on July 1, 1971. J. England, above 1000 m high cliff, is silhouetted by the sea ice of Lady Franklin Bay with the mountains of Judge Daly Promontory in the background. The history and majesty of this landscape inspired England to successfully propose the area for what is now Quttinirpaaq National Park, Canada’s northernmost park.

northern Banks Island looking out across M’Clure Strait, a 70-kilometre-wide channel free of sea ice as far as the eye could see,” said England.

“Only four summers earlier I could have walked across thick, multi-year sea ice covering that channel all the way from Banks to Melville Island. Now it was completely gone, the long sought “open polar sea” was spread out before me exactly where Captain M’Clure’s ship HMS Investigator was trapped and crushed in the 1850’s.”

England’s fieldwork in the archipelago also includes accidental discoveries that would boggle the minds of Las Vegas odds makers. Not once, but twice, on rough Arctic terrain, England came across written messages from past explorers to the Arctic islands.

“I was taking a rest and sitting with my back up against a large cairn built on the summit of small island when I noticed a brass cylinder protruding from the ground near the heel of my boot,” explained England.

“I saw the date—March 10, 1876—below the signature of Captain Stephenson of the HMS Discovery, a member of the first British expedition to reach northern Ellesmere Island,” said England.

A year later, England found two more metal cylinders with long, handwritten notes from

Adolphus Greely, leader of a U.S. Lady Franklin Bay expedition to northern Ellesmere Island in 1881, the very first International Polar Year.

“Here I was, doing my PhD research, and I find this note written by Arctic explorers almost 100 years earlier,” said England. “That polar year was the first time the world was encouraged to fully

“Here I was, doing my PhD research, and I find this note written by Arctic explorers almost 100 years earlier.” cooperate in joint scientific discoveries of both the Arctic and Antarctica. The serendipity and honour of finding these messages still amazes me.” Later that summer, England sent a letter from Ellesmere Island to Parks Canada, proposing what would become Canada’s northernmost National Park Quttinirpaaq. He adds, “This is one of my earlier Arctic accomplishments and one that few really

know about compared with my later successful efforts lobbying the federal government for increased support of northern research”.

England’s nearly 50-year commitment to Arctic research was recognized by Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. A Northern Research Chair (2002–2012) one of six awarded across Canada - enabled him to complete a transect of environmental change across the entire Arctic Archipelago, an area similar to that of Europe. His research results, that span from Ice Age to present, provide the framework to place modern changes in a meaningful, longterm context, addressing what are natural vs. anthropogenic impacts.

The latest recognition for England’s career comes with his induction into the Royal Society of Canada, the country’s oldest and most prestigious scholarly institute.

“Part of our stewardship in Canada is intellectual stewardship. And the research that’s being done at the University of Alberta in northern science— by myself as well as many talented colleagues and graduate students—is all part of Canada’s responsibility for the Arctic. And to this end, we have demonstrated well-recognized international leadership.”

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The

rewards of a lifetime of looking at things

differently…

Physicist Don Page named to the Royal Society of Canada FELLOW

It’s not everyday you meet someone who’s openly argued with Stephen Hawking and won. Meet Don Page, an award-winning professor in the Department of Physics and a recently named Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada - and one of the few people in the world who can make that claim.

Page, who joined the U of A in 1990, earned a reputation as a rebel in his field of cosmology early on, “I studied and lived with Dr. Stephen Hawking who was my post doctoral supervisor, and when I struck out to find my first faculty position, I also started to disagree with some of his theories. I think people were surprised that I would go up against him – but I think I earned respect for having the courage to do that at first – and then when he agreed that I was right, well, I just wish I would have made a larger wager with him,” laughs Page.

This orientation for asking bold questions has led to dual notoriety, not only as a rebel, but also as an icon - with no less than four concepts that bear his name: the Page approximation in blackhole physics, the Page metric in quantum gravity, the Page charge in supergravity and the Hawking10

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Page transition in black-hole thermodynamics— as well as the refutation of three major claims by Stephen Hawking.

While the world he describes may seem to express complexity itself, he sees simplicity. “We think the universe as a whole may be much simpler than most of its individual parts, just as the set of all whole numbers is simpler than most of the very large numbers that set contains. We would like to find conceptually simple laws for describing the whole universe, even though it may be far beyond our abilities to calculate from these simple laws the full consequences for the complex individual parts.”

How does a scientist come to lead a field of inquiry with such rigor and originality? As a child growing up in Alaska, Page didn’t actually attend school until he started university. He was taught

Don Page

On December 10, 2010, I randomly caught the pyroclastic eruption of the Kizimen Volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula while flying home from a conference in Korea. I was zooming in on various mountains, and when I took the photo of Kizimen, I didn’t even realize that it was erupting.

“We see such mathematical beauty and simplicity and elegance in the physical universe that God has created.”

at home by his two adventure-hungry parents who thought they’d leave Missouri for a one-year adventure in Alaska but ended up staying for 31 years.

An extraordinary way to start - and an extraordinary way to approach a promising career as he went on to study and collaborate not only with Hawking, but with luminaries like Bryce DeWitt, Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle, Roger Penrose, Martin Rees, Leonard Susskind, Kip Thorne, Steven Weinberg, John Wheeler, and Edward Witten – but he says that some of his most enduring lessons came from Werner Israel, who brought Page to the U of A and whom Page admires as perhaps the greatest gravitational theorist in the history of Canada. “I have greatly benefited from being part of that group.”

And so have we.

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Robert Rankin (l) and hybrid computational physics protégé, Jan Paral (r).

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Space weather and cloud computing A new forecast for science A U of A space physics doctoral student and his PhD supervisor are stretching the capabilities of cloud computing—by roughly 154 million kilometres—to model the conditions surrounding Mercury. In the process, they and their colleagues may help fundamentally reshape the way scientists access, harness and share computing power.

Jan Paral was able to create detailed (and visually stunning) animated models of Mercury’s magnetosphere and its interactions with the solar wind, by combining satellite data with observations from MESSENGER, NASA’s spacecraft orbiting the planet.

Paral’s code requires a bit more computing power than the average PhD student can access.

Fortunately, he found it—in the form of BlueGene, IBM’s massive supercomputer. Paral spent time at IBM’s T.J. Watson Labs in New York, porting his code to BlueGene, and optimizing and debugging it. Now, when he needs a supercomputer, he can access BlueGene’s immense processing power from his desk at the U of A. “The computer itself fills the entire room,” Paral marvels. “There are several racks, just like big bookshelves, and each of these shelves has roughly four thousand processors. I generally use one or two of these shelves for a couple of days.”

Paral doesn’t exactly spend that time playing Tetris. “One of my bigger simulations needs more than three billion particles pushed step by step, followed in space and time, to get the kind of result you see on the animation,” he explains. “You

“This may help fundamentally reshape the way scientists access, harness and share computing power.” need an enormous amount of resources to do that, for several days.”

As Paral’s PhD supervisor, space physics professor Robert Rankin (Physics) gets a kick out

of seeing a protégé working with one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. “It’s quite notable that IBM has given Jan this special access. He’s one of very few that I’m aware of who have that access. They don’t let just anyone walk in the door.”

Paral’s work is the boldest example so far of the power of CESWP—Cloud-Enabled Space Weather Modeling and Data Assimilation Platform.

The U of A-driven project uses cloud computing technologies to put powerful new tools into the hands of researchers. In the CESWP environment, student scientists can access preconfigured space weather simulation tools, grab powerful computing resources when they need them, and build on each other’s results.

CESWP grew out of Rankin’s desire to develop a more productive and powerful way for his students to work. Until now, he explains, space physics grad students have been forced to spend Winter . 12

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enormous amounts of time just configuring their own computers and servers and learning how to use them. “Students can get caught up in doing things that have nothing to do with their research.” Then, when one graduate student leaves the program, the next must begin essentially from scratch. “That computer is likely scrubbed for another student,” Rankin says. “You don’t have a legacy of what they’ve done.”

With CESWP, future grad students should be able to simply sit down, roll up their sleeves, and get to work. “I can sit at any computer, launch on our cloud—a virtual computer—and then use that just like my real computer,” explains Rankin.

“What I connect into is preconfigured with everything a person would need, or we can put it there if we don’t have it. You instantly have access to a common set of tools and infrastructure you need to do your research.”

IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.

Ahead of the storm U of A alumnus John Shillington (MSc ’84) and his colleagues at Cybera see cloud computing as the inevitable wave of the future. And through a combination of vision, hard work and good timing, they’ve helped put Alberta at the forefront of the rapidly emerging field.

It has all happened dizzyingly fast. Just three years ago, Cybera hired Shillington, along with Barton Satchwill (BSc ’97) and Everett Toews (BSc ‘ 02), to work on Prof.

Robert Rankin’s CESWP project.

Shillington, with the (not even slightly geeky) job title Cyberinfrastructure Architect, led the team’s effort to design and build an “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS) cloud for CESWP. IaaS allows users to tap into vast computing resources from their own desktops, explains Shillington. “You just say, I want some computers, and within a minute you actually have them.”

Before cloud computing, scientists had to rely solely on the computers under their desks and the server down the hall, Shillington says.

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“Or, you’d get in a batch queue, and wait for between 24 and 72 hours or longer. Now, if there are resources available in the cloud, you get them right away.”

Cybera built the CESWP cloud using OpenStack, an open-source software platform backed by NASA. “As far as I know, we were the first OpenStack cloud in Canada, in early 2011,” says Shillington.

That kind of head start can be priceless in the tech industry. “We were at the first OpenStack conference in the fall of 2010 and there were fewer than a hundred people there,” Shillington recalls. “At the latest conference this fall, there were several thousand people.

It’s an absolute juggernaut.”

Cybera is putting their head start to good use. Most recently, the organization announced an upcoming OpenStack-based cloud for the U of A’s Learning Management System, in partnership with Athabasca University and NAIT. Shillington observes, “We’re in a lucky position to have managed to get in at just the right time.”

The system also allows students to tap into the work of their colleagues, building collective expertise layer upon layer, Rankin says. “It serves as a backlog of your work, and at the same time it works as a gateway to models that someone wrote before you. You just click and you’ve got the results, instead of spending time rewriting models that were already there. So, if someone wanted to use Jan’s code, he points them to the virtual environment and they’re off and running.”

CESWP was developed by software experts from the U of A’s Academic Information and Communication Technologies (AICT) unit and from Cybera, the non-profit organization that oversees e-infrastructure in Alberta. Major funding was provided by CANARIE. Barton Satchwill (BSc ’97), a senior developer at Cybera, relished the opportunity to help Rankin’s vision take tangible shape. “Robert was smart enough to recognize the potential of this way of doing things,” he says. “It was enormously challenging, because there were no recipes that we could follow. There were no guidebooks for this sort of thing. It was new territory.”

Satchwill predicts CESWP will prove to be an academic game-changer. “It’s certainly going to be the way that almost everything is done in the future.”

Visit us at www.science.ualberta.ca to see Jan’s outstanding animated model.

“You just say, I want some computers, and within a minute you actually have them.”

John Shillington

2012

Alumni Recognition Awards The recipients of the 2012 Alumni Recognition Awards are some of the most successful individuals in their fields.

Congratulations to these Faculty of Science recipients.

Distinguished Alumni Award The Alumni Association’s most prestigious award recognizing a living graduate whose truly outstanding achievements have earned them national or international prominence

Theodore (Teddy) Aaron, ’39 BSc, ’42 MD not only witnessed major changes in the discipline in his nearly seven decades of practising medicine, he was at the forefront of a number of them. He was the first person in Alberta to administer penicillin, and his research led to the use of antihistamines in cold medications.

The breadth of Ted’s contributions to health care in Alberta is recognized in professional circles in his being named one of Alberta’s Physicians of the Century and receiving the Pharmacy Centennial Award of Distinction— the only person to make both lists.

The Honourable Dr. Lois E. Hole Student Spirit Award Celebrates student spirit and the many contributions students make to the betterment of the University community and beyond

Alumni Honour Award Recognizing the significant contributions made over a number of years

by University of Alberta alumni in their local communities and beyond

Yasmin Jivraj, ’80 BSc, is a seasoned business executive with more than 30 years of experience in the information technology (IT) sector.

She is president and co-owner of Edmontonbased Acrodex, which has offices across Canada and a development centre in India. An active community leader, she has served on the boards of CBC/Radio-Canada and the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. She is a supporter of, and has served on the board of, the Aga Khan Foundation Canada. For her contributions to the advancement of IT she was named a Fellow in 2005 by the Canadian Information Processing Society and, in 2011, NAIT awarded her an Honorary Bachelor of Technology in Technology Management.

Michael R. A. Mowat, ’79 PhD, is a cancer researcher whose work focuses on tumour suppression genes. Over the last 30 years, Michael—a senior scientist and professor at the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology—has published in many high-impact scientific journals, including his seminal paper in the journal Nature in 1985 that clarified the true role of the gene p53. He showed it to be a tumour suppressor, not a tumour-causing gene, and p53 is today the most studied gene in human disease. In 1992, the U.S. National Cancer Institute invited Michael to serve on its committee for research excellence in lung cancer. He is also recognized for his teaching, mentoring and relentless dedication to community service.

Kirsten Poon, ’12 BSc, plans to pursue a career in primary care medicine and to advocate for preventive health care and healthier communities. She already has an impressive record of community service, including serving as chair of the City of Edmonton Youth Council for 2010-11. Kirsten is also a founding member and board director of a startup non-profit organization, Literacy Without Borders, which aims to help communities establish sustainable literacy programs by recruiting post-secondary students to travel to developing countries and share literacy models. Additionally, Kirsten has been active on the executive of the Rotaract Club of Edmonton, which is associated with Rotary International and promotes service to the community.

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The starts, stops, and shifts of

‘The Geeks’ The serious(ly fun) business of riding a high-tech wave

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Geeks @ Geek House (1986) (L to R), Brent Gorda, Lance McAndrew, Marcel Laforce, Chuck Daniel and Derek Iverson.

The Geeks back on campus for Alumni Weekend 2012 where they joined students for a CS 469 ‘class’ in RATT. They also gave their ‘How to Launch a Tech Career’ presentation to U of A CS students, that they travel back to deliver every few years. You can see their tips online at www. science.ualberta.ca.

Geeks (L to R) Rob Enns, Lance McAndrew, Marcel Laforce, Chuck Daniel, Derek Iverson, Jim Moore and Edward Cheng.

When the eight Alberta boys who came to call themselves ‘The Geeks’ set out to study computing science in the early 80’s, they couldn’t have predicted what lay ahead. These ‘fit-for-change,’ technically literate grads who hit the job market just as the tech wave was starting to build, not only rode that wave, they owned it. With close to 50 job and industry changes between them in the 27 or so years since they graduated, you have to ask yourself, ‘how did they do that?’

With unprecedented career paths, the selfdescribed Geeks concur that it was about tenacity and also the strengths of their friendships - that started in the late-night computer lab sessions

where they practically lived because nobody had home computers. “Basically, we were hanging out with all these other geeks getting our computer science assignments done at all hours of the night and morning, so we got to know each other pretty well. Plus, the lack of sleep jacks up the jocularity and fun,” is how Chuck Daniel (BSc ‘86) describes their early encounters. “I can still remember Marc Shandro (BSc ‘86) and Bob Banks (BSc ‘85) bringing in the ingredients for a salad that they made and ate right in front of the terminal so they wouldn’t have to leave during a compiler design course!”

While their demanding program first brought

them together, they agree that Lance McAndrew (BSc ’86) bound them together. McAndrew, who started the CS 469 outings in Room at the Top (RATT – the popular bar on campus), says “we were probably the first students to ever use email, and we put it to good use.” Lance couldn’t have known what he was starting - the CS 469 tradition is alive and well. Jake Brand, the current president of the UACS student association says, “CS 469 most definitely is still going on. Just last night we filled up seven tables’ worth of people for the ‘midterm’.”

Their methodology for finding balance between work and fun continues to pay serious dividends – their focus, self- discipline, overcoming the human need for sleep, and maybe most significantly – the will to stay connected has served them well. And in the true spirit of the technological evolution that has shaped their lives, they’ve graduated from ‘just email’ to the ‘Digital Moose.’ (www.digitalmooselounge.com).

Just the place you’d expect to find these guys, a serious(ly fun) place for Canadian expatriates living in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area to network (yes, Lance is on the board, yes, they dress up as Mounties at their Canada Day picnics).

Derek Iverson (BSc ’87), one of the Geeks, and a manager at Google sums it up when he says, “I can only hope my boys manage to find an equally amazing collection of friends, mentors, and professors who will make their school years and future careers a life-long learning experience.”

You can see more of the Geeks’ reunion shots through the years at www.science.ualberta.ca.

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1982 - 87

Organized Computer Science social events using early email on campus most noteworthy is CS 469, the weekly CS gathering in Room at The Top, RATT. This tradition lives on today!

Met Derek and Brent in Lister Hall. When I first walked into their room, instead of clothes in their closet they had beer stacked from floor to ceiling!

Chuck Daniel BSc ‘86 Bellevue, WA Hometown: Eckville, AB

Had sleepdeprivation inspired social times in all-night labs . . . plus we spent a lot of late nights at RATT.

Derek Iverson BSc ‘87 Pleastanton, CA Hometown: Wainwright, AB

Brent Gorda BSc ‘87 San Ramon, CA Hometown: Mayerthorpe, AB

Played in a C&W band

Rob Enns BSc ‘87 (Honours) Los Gatos, CA Hometown: Edmonton, AB Edward Cheng BSc ‘87 (specialization business application) San Ramon, CA Hometown: Edmonton, AB t Class of ‘86 buted in ua technically grad o much fun, ‘87...had a bit to ey and had ran out of monI finished in to start work. hool. summer sc

Jim Moore BSc ‘87 Vancouver, BC Hometown: Fort McMurray, AB

Met Derek in 1st year Physics class. Met rest of Geeks through him.

HAD EMAIL, JOINED CS469

Marcel Laforce BSc ‘88 Vancouver, BC Hometown: Legal, AB

Apple Computer.

Cupertino, CA Started as an intern and stayed for 8 years.

Visited and worked in 15 different countries.

Moved to California

Did startup #1, MicroTech, with Geek House mates

Lived in Geek House

Lance McAndrew BSc ‘86 San Jose, CA Hometown: Didsbury, AB

Did startup #1, MicroTech, with Geek House mates

Jim met his wife at a party at my place, he was dating my former girlfriend at the time.

first real job

Computing Devices Corp. Edmonton, AB. (contract)

Alberta Hospital.

Edmonton, AB

Our team moved to Victoria. Job was great - worked with my friends.

married sisters

Believe it or not, I was their System Manager while still completing my degree.

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Moved to California With Myrias’ insolvency, most Geeks exited to Vancouver or to the US.

This was my first exposure to a start-up and the heartbreak of a company that met with financial despair.

Instructor at the Westerra Did start- Community up #1, College, Stony MicroTech, Plain, AB. with Geek House d It merge . mates into NAIT

Myrias. Edmonton, AB. Started in the test group for the compilers, promoted to work on Fortan compiler, linker and loader (to fix bugs in the code). Left for CA in May 1990, same year Myrias went under.

Myrias. Edmonton, AB. Summer before I went to grad school - tested the Myrias assembler (written by Gilles Chartrand, BSc ‘84).

I remember writing a bug report where I put a comment that said “this space for rent”. Dan Wilson (BSc. ‘80), founder of Myrias, thought that was hilariously funny...

Hired by Jim. I was there for a year while waiting for my work visa to join Lance at Apple (joined Motorola in Vancouver instead)

Myrias.

Edmonton, AB.

Did startup #1, MicroTech, with Geek House mates

M.Math Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON.

Moved to California With Myrias’ insolvency, most Geeks exited to Vancouver or to the US.

Moved to California

I joined them a nn during my wa el be Unix Kern hacker period.

Bell Northern Research.

Ottawa, ON.

Myrias. Edmonton, AB. U of A Instructional Support for Computer Science, Edmonton, AB.

The “Google” of our era. I didn’t think I had the tech chops to work here - like some of my fellow-grads. But, I ventured over to their offices near the Legislature to visit Ted Allen (BSc. ‘87). When I went to retrieve two Cokes from the vending machine, I ran into Derek who asked if I wanted to replace the gal who just left their Accounting Department. First experience with being laid off.

Summer Quebec student exchange: L’office Des Personnes On couch in Handicappe basement for de Quebec. one fall Drummondville, QC. Lived in Geek House

Married Donna.

We met at a party at Chuck’s. I was dating Chuck’s former girlfriend at the time.

1982 - 87 18

Lotus Development Corp. Toronto, ON.

Northwest Geographics. Edmonton, AB

Kakari Systems Ltd. Edmonton, AB. This was a referral from Brent.

Lotus Development Corp. Toronto, ON. Started as a software developer.

Worked really well with clients - promoted to management within a year.

Hired Marcel.

1996 - 2006 enCommerce/Entrust. San Jose, CA

Centrify. San Jose, CA (startup)

This startup focused on web site security and user login management. I got to see the internet boom and bust from the inside. The company lost 50% of it’s value in one day.

Started as employee #15.

Worked on Unix/Linux/Mac user security and privilege management. Centrify survived the financial crisis of 2008 - 2010 and is still going strong.

MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Phoenix, AZ

Consumer Software Inc. Vancouver, BC. On contract for IBM while CS was also developing their own PC LAN based email system, Network Courier (acquired by Microsoft in ‘91). In ‘94 the co. moved to Redmond WA. That was the year I moved countries, got married and had a son.

Microsoft closed shop in Vancouver and relocated Motorola. everyone to Vancouver, Redmond, WA. BC. Big regret, I chose to not e, or relocate therefed.

I’m not retir Amdahl Open Systems.

Fremont, CA Joined Myrias ex pats. The fun was short-lived, they closed the division a year later.

Worked on PhD. (Computer Science) at University of California at Davis (incomplete)

Smitten with the idea of exploring the southern USA and bitten by the networking bug.

Big regret, not joining forces with eBay. We were across the road from Pixar, but we were there first.

Helped some ‘Myrioids’ find work here, and it’s the only job I ever resigned from.

Took a few MBA courses at U of T...

But I was too busy working & having fun :-)

Oracle Canada.

Edmonton, AB. Started out as a low-level consultant, rose four positions in two years - became known as the fixer and the client whisperer.

1993 Delrina. Toronto, ON. Canadian tech start- up success story. Their uncontrolled growth led to lots of problems with customer support. I was hired to turn things around. The company was eventually acquired by Symantec.

Currently, I am a part of two companies I founded to further my interest in online and direct marketing, software development and investing in other businesses.

I’m based in Bellevue, WA.

Favorite tech & social apps, etc. Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, Visual Studio, Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Visual SlickEdit, GlobalScape CuteFTP Pro, Google Chrome, Gmail, TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio

Currently, NetApp Technical Centre, Vancouver, BC. Sr. Director of Engineering, Big Data and Site Lead for the Vancouver Technical Centre.

Favorite tech & social apps, etc. Favorite “Likes”: photography, wines, golf, snowboarding with my son and first and foremost, my family.

Electronic Arts. Vancouver, BC With every employer change, I changed industries.

I had 10 awesome years leading software development and test teams and working with many of Cisco’s higher-end routing products.

Managed “Future Technology Group”: National Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre Berkeley, CA

Back to LLNL to design/develop “Petascale” computing systems. Held a contract with IBM for the BlueGene P/Q architectures.

The result of this work is the fastest computer in existence - Sequoia, and IBM BlueGene Q System at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory @ 16 PFlops measured, 20 peak.

Juniper Networks.

Sunnyvale, CA

more I wanted r in the u o av fl p u star tley.)

Silicon Val

I was wanting to keep the start-up vibe going.

Berkeley Networks. Berkeley, CA (The company was acquired by FORE)

Currently, Google, Mountain View, CA

Redback Networks / Ericsson. San Jose, CA

Cisco Systems. San Jose, CA

Followed Amdahl ex patriots to super-secret startup. First experience with a dedicated corp chef and great food. MicroUnity filed for bankruptcy in 1996.

Start-up #2, Bonsai Software, Inc., Emeryville, CA.

Program Manager in the Microsoft CRM team. I needed a change and was becoming more interested in online business and customer management so I moved from the Microsoft Exchange team to the Microsoft CRM team. After a year there I decided to leave to become an entrepreneur.

My first layoff - but my ten years there were some of the most enjoyable of my career. You have ‘rock star’ status and everyday was interesting. The programming, and the people - artists, musicians, creative talent and the subject matter experts -professional athletes, movie stars & directors, models, race car drivers... It was hard work though. I got reacquainted with all-nighters (fondly remembered all-nighters with the guys - how much we bonded.)

Spectrum Signal Processing.

Vancouver, BC.

IBM. Raleigh, NC Coopers and Lybrand Consulting.

Edmonton, AB.

Soft ware De sign Lead on Microsoft Ex the chan Server team ge

Digital Signal Processing co.

Discovered what Real Time Processing meant!

FORE Systems.

Washington, DC

Currently, working at startup #3 in San Jose, CA. Working on Foreign Favorite tech & social apps, Exchange and Mobile Banking. etc. I treat computers and software as tools, and spend In a start-up you are my work hours using them. always defining your role My favorite time is when I shut and pushing the boundthem down and do something aries of technology. like play golf or hockey.

Microsoft. Redmond, WA Microsoft.

Redmond, WA

MicroUnity Systems.

Sunnyvale, CA

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), High Performance Computing.

Livermore, CA.

2006 - PRESENT

PeopleSoft USA. Pleasanton, CA

Triagonal Services. San Ramon, CA

This was around Y2K - there was a big hiring surge. I had to move to the US and I could live anywhere near an airport.

I picked the Bay Area because Lance, Rob, Brent & Derek were there. Oracle took over PeopleSoft in 2005. No plans of joining Oracle for a third time.

Consulting services for PeopleSoft and Oracle clients - my intro to the world of small business. I re-purposed the name from a defunct consulting company I started in university with Ted Allen (BSc. ‘87) and George Rudelich (BSc. ‘87)

More bleedingedge technologies & lots of smart and passionate people. The food is better now :-)

Got to “do it all over again” with a co. emerging from bankruptcy - responsible for building new software development and test teams.

Start-up #3: Whamcloud, Danville, CA Took over opensource (Lustre), hired 55 staff in 6 countries. Lots of international travel.

Sold to Intel day before second anniversary.

Favorite tech & social apps, etc.

Google+, Aperture and fatherhood to three boys.

Currently: stayed on at Favorite tech & Intel as General social apps, etc.

Manager I’m mostly anti-social for High in practice. I’m not Performance that interested in Data Division, what people are Santa Clara, CA having for dinner.

Favorite tech & social apps, etc.

Not much to say about social apps.

Nicira. Palo Currently, VP I’d rather interact with real people Engineering Alto, CA than read about what my friends are in VMware’s (Nicira was thinking when they are standing in Network acquired and Security, line at the grocery store. :) Besides, by it’s early days for this social app thing.

Palo Alto, VMware) Who knows what the world will look CA. like in 5 or 10 years.

Currently, Triagonal Services, consulting services for PeopleSoft and Oracle clients.

San Ramon, CA ‘Travelling IT Gnome.’ I’m never actually in the Bay Area.

Favorite tech & social apps, etc. The only social media that I subscribe to is LinkedIn. And after being pestered by Lance, I purchased Slingboxes to justify my cable bill. Using high-speed internet and an app on my iPad, I can control and watch my TV and TiVo from anywhere.

State of the Art. Irvine, CA.

Moved to California

The company was acquired by Sage, a UK based company. I worked in California for 9 years. Sr. VP in charge of IT and Customer Services.)

1996 - 2006

I moved to Vancouver, BC when Sage acquired a company there (ACCPAC). I transferred to lead integration and manage acquired division.

Currently, Left Sage n y ow JP Moore to star t m lt ent consu Associates managem y and I’ve an Management ing comp g that Consulting, been doin . ce n si ever Vancouver, BC.

Favorite tech & social apps, etc. I’m a nerd/Geek at heart & I love playing with technology. I’m busy with three great kids (one in CS at Waterloo, one in Arts at UBC & one in high school.)

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Chips off the Old Block: Biologists hunt for disappearing traits in wild animal pedigrees There is a familiar echo in Alberta’s rough hills, a solid pop that could erupt from any direction and continue for hours. It’s the sound of the province’s official animal, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, colliding heads with one another to determine who’s ‘King of the Hill’. But the spike that curls off its forehead like a French horn is more than armour — it’s a status symbol that has, for millions of years, made very clear whose genes thrive and whose don’t.

The problem is, it’s a status symbol for trophy hunters too, so as hunters pick off the best of the pack, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is sent off a cliff. With artificial selection at the pulleys, the animal’s namesake is becoming less true. In fact, the gene for big, fast-growing horns may already be extinct.

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(L to R) Bio Sci Professor David Coltman and researcher Corey Davis.

Grad student Rene Malenfant holding a sedated baby Polar Bear, March 11, 2012, in Wapusk National Park, near Churchill, Manitoba.

That’s what David Coltman (biological sciences) wants to know. If he can find out which genes play a role in big-horn development, he says, “we could maybe make changes in management that would mitigate the impact of hunting.”

The researcher left the University of Sheffield for the U of A’s Department of Biological Sciences in 2004 to be closer to the Alberta Fish and Wildlife’s project, Ram Mountain, which has tagged and tracked some 1,000 bighorn sheep since 1971.

This was a year after publishing a landmark study in Nature , based on Ram Mountain’s sheep. But when he first arrived at U of A, the best technology available was still insufficient for his quest.

Now, thanks to nano-assays—tiny genome mappers—he’s closer than ever.

Developed by California-based sequencing technology company Illumina, it looks like a robot’s wafer biscuit — a thin, glass slide with 24 rectangles, each with 10,000 nano-probes to

search DNA for specific nucleotides. “That should narrow the hunt down to what regions look to be related to horn development,” says Coltman. And this December, he and his team are getting an early Christmas present: A nano-assay specially designed to test double the sample—some 700,000 sheep genes, something unimaginable only three years ago.

But Coltman acknowledges he is lucky to be able to rely on existing agricultural assay technologies that were used for finding qualities like better wool and lamb chops in the Bighorn’s close cousin, the domestic sheep.

His colleague, Corey Davis (Biological Sciences), who is seeking similar answers about another iconic Canadian animal—the Polar Bear— is also relying on the spill-over from agricultural technologies, while also customizing an assay of his own. Although his technology is in the early stages of design, the molecular biologist will soon

Big Horn Sheep in the National Bison Range in Montana.

be able to sequence the Toonie mascot’s three million genomes. Even though it’s climate change at the bear’s genetic pulleys, the same theory applies: artificial selection apparently favours weaker individuals, those that are thinner, shorter and producing smaller litters. Understanding these demographics for endangered animals has huge implications.

Coltman predicts we’re not far from a future of mobile genome sequencing, when a researcher could scan any organism with a smart phone and produce instant results - where a family physician may be able to prescribe medication based not just on what ails you, but by what your genome says about you.

Davis, who spends up to half his time studying molecular innovations, says, “a decade ago, sequencing ten genomes was a huge accomplishment,” but soon, his chip will take a snapshot of 10,000 polar bear genes and his work will enter the fray of accelerated technology.

But, “that’s the easy part,” he says. The hard part is keeping a program afloat for generations, like the Hudson bears he studies, something Canada Wildlife Service has done even at a cost of $20,000 a bear. “You can’t make that data up,” says Davis, “you can’t go back in time and study animals that lived 30 years ago.”

A decade ago, sequencing ten genomes was a big deal, but soon we’ll take a snapshot of 10,000 polar bear genes and our work will enter the fray of accelerated technology.

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Gerry Darichuk

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Self-made

man

Every year, about 400 inventors find their way to Gerry Darichuk’s (BSc ’68) plastics company, hoping to have their product ideas – everything from pooper-scoopers to welding tools – brought to life.

“We probably produce more patents out of this little place than anyone else in Alberta,” says Darichuk, who bought Alta Injection Plastics (and two other related plastics companies in the early 1990s). Nonetheless, only 50 or 60 inventions will be successfully patented; the vast majority are “brain farts” that fall off the table in the first three months.

Darichuk knows that the success of these products hinges on one thing: the inventor’s smarts – not their apparent success. “I always say to my guys, ‘Never look at a person and judge what they can do,’ ” says Darichuk. It’s the entrepreneurs in fancy suits and fast cars that need the credit checks.

“Our most prolific inventor is a housewife.

Lives in Canmore. Get that,” he says. Another client is a 23-year-old welder – “Just a kid,” says Darichuk – who got tired of replacing his welding handles and decided to invent a more durable product. “If you met him, here’s a guy who maybe you’d say is a worker bee. He’s not impressive, he uses crude language,” he says. “But, putting that aside, he’s got a brain.”

Like the welder and the housewife, Darichuk’s success in business has been the product of his smarts —and a lot of hard work. Orphaned as an infant, Darichuk spent his childhood in foster care. After attempting to run away from his foster

homes several times, he made it to Alberta at 17.

“When you’re close enough to 18, they stop chasing you,” he says.

He found work in the oil patch as a manual labourer, which suited him fine. He might have stayed there, too, if an older man hadn’t urged him to consider postsecondary education. “He said, ‘You’re too smart to be out there. I have an old friend who can get you into university,’ ” says Darichuk.

So, after taking a few refresher courses, he registered in the Faculty of Science at the U of A. Because he hadn’t been in the province long enough to qualify for student loans, he worked in the oil patch to pay his tuition. “I had one advantage – learning came easy to me,” he says.

Upon graduating, Darichuk began a family (he has four sons) and pursued a teaching diploma.

After almost a decade as a high school teacher, he decided to pursue entrepreneurship full-time, beginning a consultancy in Calgary and buying into a drilling business.

Decades later, Darichuk has made his fortune and then some. But, rather than coast on the proceeds of his hard-earned success, he’s an active philanthropist. For the last 28 years, he’s been a member of the Rotary Club and has traveled to dozens of countries on philanthropic missions.

He’s administered polio vaccines in India and

helped create micro-credit unions in sub-Saharan Africa geared towards helping women start sustainable farming operations to feed their families.

In much of the world, it only takes a few dollars for women to pull themselves and their children out of poverty. “When you can watch a lady so proud to show you her mushroom farm, and you saw her two years ago begging on the street, you have no idea the feeling it gives you,” Darichuk says. These entrepreneurs have a hunger for success, and a work ethic, that reminds him of the inventors he’s met in Canada.

Darichuk figures his passion for humanitarianism stems from his own rough start to life: ”I’d say if it wasn’t for a few people along the way who said, ‘Hey, kid, you’re going in the wrong direction,’ I could have been in jail.” A person’s sense of right or wrong “can depend upon how full their

Darichuk’s success in business has been the product of his smarts — and a lot of hard work stomach is,” he says.

But, it’s also just fun. Once, in southern India, he surreptitiously slipped a purple rupee note into the hand of a withered peasant woman, as she prayed outside of a cathedral in southern India.

When she opened her hand and realized what she’d been given – about three years of income – she got to her feet and sprinted after him to thank him, utterly stunned. “If you’re not having fun, what are you having?”

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contours SCIENCE

Faculty of Science 6-189 CCIS University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E1

40063605

us go greener. g in p el h r fo s k an th d last issue. It’s never too Stay in touch an tours electronically after our

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