U of G Profs, Scientist Make Headlines
July 28, 2009 - In the News
Professors and researchers from the University of Guelph are making national and international headlines this week.
Scientists from U of G’s Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding and the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario were featured in several news reports Monday and today, discussing how they helped discover a DNA barcode that will make it possible to genetically differentiate land plants.
Integrative Biology Prof. Paul Hebert, who invented DNA barcoding (using a short standardized region of DNA for identifying species) was quoted in an article in Nature magazine Monday.
Integrative Biology Prof. Mehrdad Hajibabaei, CCDB’s associate director, and Sujeevan Ratnasingham, who heads BIO’s informatics group, were both quoted in a CBC news article. The two were part of an international team of 52 scientists involved in the project. The research also appeared in Scotsman, Scotland’s national newspaper, and in the United Kingdom’s Telegraph newspaper.
On Monday, Economics professor John Livernois did more than a dozen live interviews with CBC radio stations across the nation, discussing the recent EU ban of seal products. Livernois, who recently published a study on Canada’s seal hunt, was discussing why the economic benefits of ending the hunt far outweigh the costs.
History professor Elizabeth Ewan was in the news in Scotland recently while attending the Scottish Diaspora Forum. She published an opinion piece in Scotsman and was interviewed by BBC world news. Ewan, who holds a University research chair in U of G’s Centre for Scottish studies, was discussing diaspora (the forced or voluntary movement of a population sharing common ethnic identity) and its effect on Scotland.
