Dr Arden Bement

Dr Arden Bement has been appointed director of the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency with an annual budget of nearly $5.5 billion. Bement’s nomination was made in September by president George W Bush and confirmed by the US Senate November 20. He has been serving as acting director since February/04. The beginning of his six-term term coincides with his resignation as director of the National Institute of Standards & Technology within the Department of Commerce. Bement has previously served as advisor to the president and Congress….

Univ of Toronto professors Dr Sajeev John and Dr Geoffrey Ozin are the joint recipients of the first Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering. The $250,000 prize is presented by Science and Engineering Research Canada (NSERC) and was presented at a ceremony in Ottawa on December 6. John is a theoretical physicist focusing on the behaviour and control of light, while Ozin is a materials chemist. Together they have worked for five years designing crystals that can trap light. The award was named in honour of the late Dr Bertram Brockhouse, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in physics who worked as a researcher at the Chalk River Laboratory of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd….