C 0 N C 0 R D I A,S SDAY ,____PORT VOL. 2I APRIL 24, I997 N ° I 5 Extraordinary support shown for computational fluid dynamics team by industry and the University Habashi team_gets $612,880 for nevv computer lab design could be improved. BY BARBARA BLACK An airplane wing's performance is echanical Engineering Profes­ surprisingly delicate. Ice buildup can Msor Wagdi (Fred) Habashi's be rough enough to mar a flight's team has received a $612,880 major smoothness, and has caused major installation grant from NSERC that air crashes. Habashi has done con­ will significantly boost Concordia's_ siderable work ~th a consortium of computational simulation capabili­ 10 industries and Gary Wagner (an ties and improve its ability to help its Air Canada pilot) and Grant industrial partners achieve better and Guevremont (Pratt & Whitney) to safer design. tackle the problem. The grant, complemented by As another example, take a heli­ $75,000 from Concordia, will buy a copter pilot trying to land on the state-of-the-art facility in Habashi's 5 deck of a ship at sea, facing the dan­ specialty, computational fluid I! gerous possibility that the wind will d}'.Jlafnics (CFD), and the infrastruc- " create a vortex that will crash or ture to secure and maintain it. The sideslip the craft. Simulating the current equipment in Concordia's problem in a wind tunnel introduces CFD lab, located on Guy St., is tigative efforts further. The grant When you look out the window of computer screen, as well as values problems of scale, but simulating the what Research Associate Yves Bour­ from the Natural Sciences and Engi­ a flying airplane and see the wing calculated for the flow of air around landing on a computer comes gault calls a "medium-sized" four­ neering Research Council of Canada oscillating, or ice forming on it, it, the temperature it is subject to, remarkably close to the real thing. processor computer, with half a will allow the team to do large-scale you' re seeing the kind of problem the the speed it travels, and other condi­ Habashi's team is working with gigabyte of memory. computations to replace testing that Habashi team is trying to solve. tions. Bringing all these numbers CAE, the flight-simulator pioneers, The team of more than a dozen is often too static, too expensive, or In CFD, a model of the wing can together can build a picture of how to do just that. scientists wants to push their inves- too imprecise. be generated numerically on the efficient the wing is, and how its See Habashi, p. 9 Bedard vvill be Dean of Graduate Studies and Research He succeeds Martin Kusy, who has design that has enjoyed continuous interaction with the larger commu­ BY DONNA VARRICA held the post since 1991. funding from the Natural Sciences nity, Bedard has been active in orga­ laude Bedard will take over the Bedard began his career at and Engineering Research Council nizing public lectures and activities Concordia in 1983, teaching in the since 1985. He also supervised the Cpost of Dean of the School of to promote the role of science, such Graduate Studies and Research, Centre for Building Studies (CBS). development of the User's Room as a as Science Exploration Week, Sci­ starting a five-year term on June 1. He has a BScA {science appliquee) in unique computer teaching laboratory civil engineering from Universite in the Faculty of Engineering and ence Summer Camps (REACH), Laval (1978) and completed his MSc Computer Science. and the Engineering Explorations (1979) and PhD (1983) in concrete Ever _mindful of the importance of event for aboriginal students. structures and technology at the Imperial College in London (U.K.). Since 1995, he has been the Asso­ ciate Dean, Student Affairs and Open meetings today and Mon~ay Curriculum, at the School of Gradu­ ate Studies and Research. He has Meetings of faculty and staff with the senior administration will be held today and Monday at noon in the Alumni Auditorium (H-110). served as an adviser and director of Rector Frederick Lowy issued the following invitation to employees: the co-op prograin in Building "I know that many of you are very concerned about the general state Engineering and has been the official of Concordia, and have particular concerns about several i~sues that representative of the Ordre des directly impact on your careers at the University. ingenieurs to Concordia since 1991. "I would like to provide a forum where these concerns can be Bedard has been an active recruiter shared with your colleagues and where any questions or comments for CBS, especially in the francoph­ you may have can be made directly to the senior administration. I one milieu. would also like to explain briefly some of the work that the senior He is a member of the Canadian administration has undertaken to deal with the difficult budget situa­ Society for Civil Engineering and a tion and some interesting initiatives that we are implementing." member of its Computer Applica­ Senior administrators at the meetings will be Lowy and Vice-Rec­ tors Jack Lightstone, Marcel Danis and Charles Emond, Secretary­ > a: tions Division, as well as a member ::, General Berengere Gaudet and CFO Larry English. w of the American Society of Civil ~ Today's meeting is on faculty-related issues, and Monday's is on ti Engineers. He was a founding mem- issues primarily affecting staff. Any member of the Concordia com­ ""z § . ber of the Canadian Society for munity, including students, is welcome at either meeting. They begin 'ill Building Engineering, which was at noon, and are expected to last until 1:30 p.m. Q. ti established in 1993. - Extra shuttle buses will run between campuses, and managers and ::i Bedard developed a research pro­ unit heads are requested to be flexible in allowing their staff to attend. Claude Bedard gram in computer-aided building Three researcher-artists exhibit projects linked by gender and the creative impulse Wo111en use art - and 111ath - to express the111selves tural identities. she is preparing herself, so she can BY EU G E N IA XENOS Professor Lipke said the women go on and develop herself." portrait of an Indian woman in in the exhibition "stand out within Interestingly, in Hughes' presenta­ A a sari shows her smiling warmly their groups, in that they are willing tion, culture is explored through var­ from a street in Delhi. She studies to take the extra step to push for ious aspects of mathematics. A part computational fluid dynamics. something they believe in. But more of the display consists of entries in a Nearby, a photo shows an immi­ than that, they represent the average book by Dr. Surja Kumari, Status of grant woman in Montreal with her of that particular group." Women Through Teaching of Mathe­ collection of figurines. In the caption, Mullen's project involved pho­ matics: A Teacher's Handbook (1984). tographing immigrant women in Here is an example from a section she says, "This one here, this man Montreal, who compare their lives in on the growing role of women in who is pulling his load, that is [like] Canada and in their birthplace. One business: "Sushma got a loan from when I just came to Montreal. I woman, Olga, says, "In my country, the bank and opened a wool shop. wasn't pulling a load, but you know, almost everybody, they do some­ She invested 0.5 part of that amount when you leave back home and you thing. In Jamaica, is not like here, in the purchase of sweaters, 0.4 part come up to 11)-ake a better future for when you run and buy everything. in the purchase of wool, and 0.25 yourself - when I bought it, I said, My mother, she usually make the part of the remaining amount in the 'It will remind me of this thing."' tablecloth for her table, and my aunt, purchase of a knitting machine. The Just a little further, the brilliant she usually make her tablecloth." remaining amount was spent in the Shy teacher 111akes colours of the traje, the traditional Lipke's project was a video, direct~ decoration of the shop. If her loan woven Mayan dress, stand out behind ed with John McKay, on Mayan was 22,000 rupees, find the amount the deep black hair and strong faces women and textile weaving. It is a invested in each item." students feel valued of Guatemala's indigenous people. fascinating look at what the traje Hughes said that as the project On April 11, the Concordia Council confidence in me." These portraits were taken by means to identity in Mayan culture, continues to develop, she may paint on Student Lift presented its awards for "His style harks back to a bygone three Concordians in an effort to and how women aim to preserve that visual equivalents to the mathematical the year, including four for Teaching era," Byrnes said. "He's very simple "re-present" the complexity and rich­ culture through painting and dress. equations. A painter with a graduate Excellence. This instalment of the and straightforward. He packs his ness of women's experiences around Maria Dominga, a Mayan, degree in the history of mathematics, SpellBinders series prefiles one of them. lectures with a lot of information, the world. recounted in the film, "We are she said, "Interdisciplinarity is becom­ but he breaks it down in easy enough The three Fine Arts researcher­ indigenous people, but now I am ing the norm in Fine Arts." BY ALISON RAMSEY terms for students to understand." artists - Cathy Mullen (Art Educa­ sending my girl to school.