The Queen's community will have the opportunity to hear from five of the university’s top researchers. The free, public lecture event will see each researcher present a 12 minute overview of their work, so that in just over an hour audience will hear about a gamut of exceptional research from philosophy to nanophotonics to Vitamin D.

The Prizes for Excellence in Research Public Lectures features the 2014 recipients – Stephen Hughes (Physics), Glenville Jones (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences), John Kirby (Education), Ian Moore (Civil Engineering) and Christine Overall (Philosophy).

An internationally renowned researcher, Dr. Hughes has made a number of outstanding contributions to the field of nanophotonics and quantum optics. In a series of landmark papers Dr. Hughes and his group developed an accurate way to understand the influence of fabrication imperfections on the propagation of light in photonic crystals, and designed a “single photon gun” for use in quantum information processing.

Dr. Jones is a widely respected biochemist and authority in the metabolism of vitamin D, a compound whose dysregulation or deficiency is correlated with a broad spectrum of diseases including osteoporosis, rickets, psoriasis, renal failure, cancer and various hypercalcemic conditions.

Dr. Kirby is one of Canada’s preeminent educational scholars and is most renowned for his contributions related to theories of reading, intelligence and students’ conceptions of learning. He is also cross-appointed to the Department of Psychology and is a member of the Centre for Neuroscience Studies.

Dr. Moore received the award for his achievements in fundamental and applied engineering research and advances in the understanding and design of buried pipes. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and in 2002 he became the second civil engineer to be awarded a Killam Research Fellowship.

Dr. Overall has made important and diverse contributions to both applied ethics and social philosophy. Her pioneering insights into reproductive ethics, where she has contributed to debates about conception, pregnancy, birthing, and reproductive technologies, continue to be influential. In 1998, Dr. Overall became the first feminist philosopher to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

For more information on the Prizes for Excellence in Research visit the website.