Skip to main content

Inaugural awards celebrate media outreach

Researchers recognized for transforming abstracts into headlines and expert commentary
June 3, 2013
|
By Fiona Downey


A new category of award was created at Concordia this year. The Concordia Media Outreach Awards honour individuals whose work has drawn the most significant coverage in mainstream media across Canada and around the globe.

The awards are given in recognition of the work faculty members and students put into bringing their research projects to the attention of journalists by doing interviews about their work or providing timely commentary on subjects of the day based on their expertise.

Chief Communications Officer Philippe Beauregard presented the inaugural edition of these awards to five members of the Concordia Community on May 30 at the Celebration of Excellence reception.
 

From left: Chief Communications Officer Philippe Beauregard with honourees Krista Byers-Heinlein, Erin Gee, Bruce Hicks. Absent: James Pfaus and Lorenzo DiTommaso. | Photo by Concordia University
From left: Chief Communications Officer Philippe Beauregard with honourees Krista Byers-Heinlein, Erin Gee, Bruce Hicks. Absent: James Pfaus and Lorenzo DiTommaso. | Photo by Concordia University


Krista Byers-Heinlein
Research Communicator of the Year (Canada)

Byers-Heinlein, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, garnered coverage in major newspapers as well as broadcast media across Canada for her research indicating that raising children to be bilingual might present short-term challenges in language acquisition but will pay off in longer-term benefits in overall cognitive skills.

James Pfaus
The award for Research Communicator of the Year (International)

Pfaus is a professor in the Department of Psychology and researcher in the Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology (CSBN). His research findings that established the first brain map of love and desire got picked up by leading media outlets in countries including Britain, Australia, India, South Africa and Guatemala. Pfaus’s research was also mentioned in an article in the May 26 edition of the New York Times Magazine.

Pfaus was also paired with author and scholar Naomi Wolf for a standing-room-only discussion on sexual desire and the effect of neurochemicals on behaviour, which kicked off the inaugural conversation series of public lectures in partnership with the Globe and Mail.

Erin Gee
Graduate Research Communicator of the Year

Gee, a student in the Master’s of Fine Arts program in Studio Arts (Open Media), received the award for the media attention generated by her role as co-creator – alongside a neuroscientist in Australia - of a software and hardware system that generates music by tapping into the brain’s response to emotions. News of the resulting musical language of emotions was carried in both French and English media across Canada and in leading newspapers across this country and abroad.

Lorenzo DiTommaso
Expert Commentator of the Year

Apocalyptic and doomsday beliefs were a topic of considerable interest with the approach of the prophesied end of the world according to certain interpretations of the Mayan calendar. DiTommaso, professor and chair of the Department of Religion, spent considerable time doing interviews for an in-depth series on Vision TV dealing with people’s enduring fascination with these scenarios as described throughout various religious traditions.

Gauging the interest in the story, DiTommaso wrote an opinion piece on the topic for Le Devoir. That item was followed by yet another wave of media attention and resulted in coverage by outlets across Canada and the United States. DiTommaso also broke new ground for Concordia by becoming the first expert commentator interviewed by the highly-respected Al-Jazeera.

Bruce Hicks
Communications Ambassador of the Year

Hicks’s expertise on Canadian and Quebec politics was in high demand as media outlets across Canada as well as in the United States and as far aways as Saudi Arabia covered last fall’s provincial election as well as a variety of issues involving the Harper government and Justin Trudeau’s arrival as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The lecturer in the Department of Political Science also collaborated with his colleague Harold Chorney, a professor in the same department, to write three distinct opinion pieces for the Gazette, exploring all the possible election results.

Read about other award winners from the May 30 Celebration of Excellence (NOW, June 3, 2013).

Related links:
•    Krysta Byers-Heinlein on Research @ Concordia
•    James Pfaus on Research @ Concordia
•    Erin Gee’s student profile
•    Lorenzo Di Tommaso’s faculty profile
•    Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology
•    Department of Religion
•    Department of Political Science
•    Department of Psychology
•    Master’s program in Studio Arts



Back to top

© Concordia University