Team Science

More than Meets the Pie

When geologist Christie Rowe was interviewed at McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in April of 2011, her panel of interviewers included one of the most distinguished Earth scientists in Canada, McGill’s very own Professor Anthony (Willy) Williams-Jones.

Following her interview, Rowe was invited that evening to a departmental party, which included a raffle featuring the opportunity to throw a cream pie in the face of Jones. Unbeknownst to Rowe, the department had rigged the raffle so that she was guaranteed to win. The good-natured pie-toss by Rowe (now Assistant Professor and Robert Wares Faculty Scholar in Economic Geology) into the face of Jones was captured on the following video.

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Great Grads: Eli Yablonovitch, BSc’67, Talks About the Importance of Giving Back

Nov 14, 2012: Eli Yablonovitch graduated from McGill University in 1967 with a BSc in Physics. His company, Alta Devices, holds the world record for solar cell efficiency (28.4%); and as the Director of the National Science Foundation’s Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science, he’s on the hunt for what’s going to replace the transistor. He is most famous for the invention of the photonic crystal, for which he is recently received the 2012 IEEE Photonics Award. Yablonovitch is a professor at the University of California, Berkley.

Team Science: Could you talk a little about your experience at McGill?

Eli Yablonovitch: When I first went to McGill, they probably had an open house, it was just fascinating to me to see all the research going on. I was just a high school student at the time.

McGill really taught me and educated me in science. My junior year I got a summer job doing research on campus. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was.

Also, the professors were fantastic. Just fantastic. I went on after McGill to graduate school at Harvard—and I still thought my professors at McGill were fantastic. And I’ve taught now at three universities, and I still think my professors were fantastic.

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