3-D fisheries ecosystem visualization on screens in Immersion Laboratory, Fisheries Centre

CFIS ...

• Download the CFIS Fact Sheet pdf here
• Read the 2010-2011 Annual Report online or download a pdf synopsis of the Report here
• is composed of 174 staff (with 21 staff in the Principal's office), supporting 77 tenure-stream faculty who carry out world-class research in eleven schools, institutes, and centres, and teach 181 graduate and undergraduate courses across UBC. Over 600 students are enrolled in twelve graduate programs
• is an acronym: College For Interdisciplinary Studies - we are "for" nurturing interdisciplinarity

• is led by Principal Hugh Brock, Professor, Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, former Director of the Genetics graduate program and Director of the Life Sciences Institute

• is a faculty like any other at UBC, but mandated by Senate to support interdisciplinarity across all of UBC

• researchers gained $26.2 million in research grants last year - $419,412 per faculty member, the highest at UBC
• faculty members hold 10 Canada Research Chairs, 2 Leading Endowment Chairs, and nearly half are jointly-appointed in two or more UBC departments
• received $11.5 million in donations last year

• located on the main floor of the CK Choi Building (1855 West Mall), an award-winning "green" building housing CFIS and two of our units, the Institute of Asian Research and the Institute for European Studies

CFIS supports collaborative, interdisciplinary research and teaching addressing complex, societal issues in  sustainability, health, and social policy.

CFIS importantly also provides the infrastructure and support allowing for collaboration between researchers in other disciplines, in industry and government, and in local and international communities, to find solutions to problems that cannot be as readily solved within the confines of a single discipline.

The resulting research is groundbreaking and global in its impact:

• Professor William Rees' ecological footprint analysis concept is now used around the world to weigh the ecological footprint of organizations and countries
• Fisheries Professors Daniel Pauly and Villy Christensen are leading the Nereus - Predicting the Future Ocean program, a $13 million, nine-year research program studying the future of the world's ocean and monitoring the impact of human activities on seafood resources.
• Dr. Tom Boyce leads the GECKO project at HELP, examining how different social environments influence children's gene expression; early research has shown that childrens' development is impacted by both nature and nurture.
• Professor Rashid Sumaila's intergenerational discounting approach to valuing resources (valuing fish as if they are those of our grandchildren) is being applied by mathematicians and in other disciplines
• Professor Lawrence Frank's research linking suburban development, car usage, and obesity is compelling, and is being factored into urban redevelopment projects around the world
• Professor Sid Fels is finding innovative applications of digital media in the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) including visual analytics (and a recent partnership with Boeing), cybergloves, and context-aware applications
• Larry Beasley helped develop the "Vancouver" model of urban development during his career as Vancouver city planner, and he is now teaching (at UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning) and applying the underlying precepts and processes to major urban development and redevelopment projects as far afield as San Diego and Abu Dhabi.

CFIS's mandate, included in UBC Senate's motion to create CFIS (effective January 1, 2007) is:

"...to facilitate and support interdisciplinarity campus-wide, and as part of that mandate, to serve as a place for the creation, development, and dissemination of new and important scholarly activities which advance the interests of UBC as a whole according to its Trek 2010 strategic vision."

CFIS is also involved in several community-based research projects and events. What is interdisciplinary research and why is it important? Go here for more background and context.

Sincerely,
Michael Burgess, CFIS Principal,
UBC Chair in Biomedical Ethics and Professor in the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics