Head of UBC Mathematics: The end of an era

Leah joined UBC as an Associate Professor in 1989. She had previously held positions at Brown University and Duke University in the USA. Leah is a graduate of Dalhousie and earned her PhD from the Weizmann Institute in Israel where she studied with Lee Segel. Leah is a mathematical biologist, with particular interests in the biophysics and biochemistry of cell motility, collective motion, and tissue modelling. Leah’s leadership in the field has been recognized for a long time, with a series of major awards from the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB), CAIMS and SIAM over the last fifteen years. The SMB recently created the Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize to recognize exceptional scientific contributions made by a woman in mathematical biology. Leah is the author of the classic text, “Mathematical Models in Biology” which remains – after nearly 35 years – the pre-eminent introductory text book in the field. She was also the main developer of our calculus stream for students in the life sciences, where her work continues to influence our teaching practice to this day. In our department, Leah was instrumental in supporting the career progress of an enormous number of colleagues, in the role of Associate Head for Faculty for over a decade.

Nassif arrived at UBC as a postdoc in 1977, and was then appointed as an Assistant Professor in 1979. He had received his PhD degree from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (now part of the Sorbonne Université). Nassif’s research is centred in PDEs and functional analysis, with around 150 published articles – many of which are co-authored with his students and postdocs at UBC. He has a long list of awards for his scholarship, including being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an Officer of the Order of Canada, winning the CMS Coxeter-James, David Borwein and Jeffrey-Williams Prizes, and being a Fellow of the AMS and the CMS. From the late 1990s into the early 2000s, Nassif was the driving force behind the establishment of PIMS, MITACS and BIRS – achieving an amazing track record of success which has shaped the development of mathematics in Western Canada, North America and globally. He served three terms as a member of UBC’s Board of Governors between 2008-2014 and 2018-2020. Nassif is well known for having opinions, many of which are correct. You can find some of his best opinions from 1995-2022 at his blog, https://nghoussoub.com/ (as well as a wealth of other information).

We wish Leah and Nassif the very best with their retirements, and hope to see them around here for many years to come.