David John Lockwood, Institute for Microstructural Sciences, National Research Council, Ottawa, is an internationally recognized authority on the optical properties of solids. His outstanding work on optical emission due to quantum confinement in semiconductor nanostructures culminated in the definitive observation of the effect in silicon, where previous world-wide efforts over two decades had proved inconclusive. His use of inelastic light scattering to elucidate the dynamical properties of superlattices, magnets and phase transitions has garnered him significant reputations in each of these quite disparate subjects. As a result, Lockwood is considered one of the world's most eminent scientists in this field. This is demonstrated by his appointment to many international committees and editorial boards, and his election as Fellow in the American Physical Society.

Jeremy N. McNeil, was born in England, and received his primary and secondary education in Newfoundland and England, respectively. He moved to Canada in 1964, received a B.Sc. Hon. in Zoology at the University of Western Ontario in 1969 and a Ph.D. in Entomology and Ecology at North Carolina State University in 1972. During his graduate studies Jeremy received both a regional and a national award from the Entomological Society of America for his research. In 1972 Jeremy took a position in the Department of Biology at Laval University, where he was a professor for 30 years, until the end of 2002. He received a Humboldt Prize and spent 2003 at Hamburg University, then in 2004 was named the Helen Battle Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. McNeil’s research interests are in behavioral and chemical ecology, studying fundamental aspects of mate choice, migration, as well as plant-insect and host-parasitoid interactions from an interdisciplinary perspective. He has trained 32 M.Sc., 17 Ph. D. students, as well as 12 PDFs, most now well established researchers in Universities and Government agencies around the world.Together they have published >190 papers in primary international journals and > 10 book chapters. He was received a number of research awards, including the C. Gordon Hewitt Award and Gold Medal from the Entomological Society of Canada, The Fry medal from the Canadian Society of Zoologists, The Silver Medal of the International Society of Chemical Ecology, the L. O. Howard Award from the Entomological Society of America (Eastern Branch) and the Delwart Prize in Chemical Ecology (Belgium). Professor McNeil has been heavily involved in teaching, giving both undergraduate and graduate courses in entomology and ecology, as well as developing a course, "Communication in Science" discussing the preparation of manuscripts, posters and oral presentations. In the last decade he has given short versions of this course in France, Portugal, Thailand and China, as well as annually at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland. He was named "Professuer etoile" in the Faculty of Science at Laval University and in 1985 was the Eastern Branch Nominee for the Entomological Society of America's Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching. Jeremy has served on editorial boards of The Canadian Entomologist, The Canadian Journal of Zoology, Entomologia experimentalis et applicata, The Journal of Chemical Ecology, Chemoecology and the Journal of Economic Entomology. He regularly serves on committees for granting agencies (Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, The Canadian Foundation of Innovation, The Canada Research Chairs program), as well as a referee for international journals, granting agencies and Universities. Dr. McNeil is a member of several learned Societies and served as President of the Entomological Society of Canada, the Entomological Society of Quebec, the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies and the International Society of Chemical Ecology. He is currently a councillor for the Entomological Society of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and is currently the RSC Foreign Secretary. Dr. McNeil is also been very active in the public awareness of science and each year, for the last 20 years, has spoken to > 500 school children in North America, Europe and Australia. He also gives regular presentations at public institutions, as well as to amateur science and gardening clubs. Jeremy has received several regional and national awards for his outreach activities, including The Faculty of Science Outreach award at UWO, the McNeil Medal from the RSC (no relation!!) and the Gordin Kaplin Award from the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies. ------------------ Jeremy N. McNeil, was born in England, and received his primary and secondary education in Newfoundland and England, respectively. He moved to Canada in 1964 when he enrolled in an honours degree in Zoology at the University of Western Ontario. Upon graduation in 1969 he enrolled as a graduate student in Entomology and Ecology at North Carolina State University and received his Ph.D. in 1972 under the direction of Professor R. L. Rabb. During his graduate studies Jeremy received a regional and a national award from the Entomological Society of America for his research on the diapause of hyperparasitoids of the tobacco hornworm. Following his Ph.D. Dr. McNeil immediately moved to the Department of Biology at Laval University in Quebec City, where he was a professor for 30 years, until he took early retirement at the end of 2002. At this time he received a Humboldt Prize and spent 2003 at Hamburg University working with Professor W. Francke in the Department of Organic Chemistry. Having decided retirement was not for him, Jeremy accepted a position as the Helen Battle Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Western Ontario in 2004. From 2008-2011 he was the Scientific Director of the Biotron, a research facility on campus, set up to study different aspects of climate change. Dr. McNeil’s research interests are in behavioral and chemical ecology, studying fundamental aspects of mate choice, seasonal migration, as well as plant-insect and host-parasitoid interactions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Within his research program Professor McNeil has trained 32 M.Sc., 17 Ph. D. students, as well as 12 PDFs, most now well established researchers in Universities and Government agencies around the world. With his students and collaborators Jeremy has published >190 papers in primary international journals and > 10 book chapters. He was received a number of research awards, including the C. Gordon Hewitt Award and Gold Medal from the Entomological Society of Canada, The Fry medal from the Canadian Society of Zoologists, The Silver Medal of the International Society of Chemical Ecology, the L. O. Howard Award from the Entomological Society of America (Eastern Branch) and the Delwart Prize in Chemical Ecology (Belgium). Throughout his career Professor McNeil has been heavily involved in teaching, giving both undergraduate and graduate courses in entomology (Introductory Entomology, Integrated Pest Management) and ecology (Introductory Ecology, Behavioral Ecology and Chemical Ecology). In addition he developed a course, "Communication in Science" discussing techniques for the preparation of manuscripts, posters and oral presentations, which he taught regularly for a number of years. In the last decade he has been invited to give short versions of this course at Universities in France, Portugal, Thailand and China, as well as giving it regularly for the last 6 years at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland. He was named "Professuer etoile" in the Faculty of Science at Laval University (based to student evaluations) and in 1985 was the Eastern Branch Nominee for the Entomological Society of America's Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching (a nomination prepared by the undergraduate and graduate students in Biology). Jeremy has/does serve on several editorial boards: The Canadian Entomologist, The Canadian Journal of Zoology, Entomologia experimentalis et applicata, The Journal of Chemical Ecology, Chemoecology and the Journal of Economic Entomology. In addition he annually serves on committees for national granting agencies (Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, The Canadian Foundation of Innovation, The Canada Research Chairs program), as well as a referee for international journals, granting agencies and Universities. Dr. McNeil is a member of several learned Societies and has served as President of the Entomological Society of Canada, the Entomological Society of Quebec, the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies and the International Society of Chemical Ecology. He is currently a councilor for the Entomological Society of Ontario. Since being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada Jeremy has chaired several RSC committees, organised an international symposium on GM plants in collaboration with the l’Academie Francais and represented the RSC in nationally funded collaboration with the Senegalese Academy. Currently he serves as the RSC Foreign Secretary. Dr. McNeil is also been very active in the public awareness of science and each year, for the last 20 years, has spoken to > 500 school children in North America, Europe and Australia. He also gives regular presentations at public institutions, as well as to amateur science and gardening clubs. Jeremy has received several regional and national awards for his outreach activities, including The Faculty of Science Outreach award at UWO, the McNeil Medal from the RSC (no relation!!) and the Gordin Kaplin Award from the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies.

Ian Fraser Putnam, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria, has made outstanding contributions to the theory of dynamical systems. He has shown that the orbits of such systems can be completely determined by algebraic methods – methods which he was instrumental in the development of. Putnam's analysis of the structure of the C*-algebra associated with a minimal homeomorphism of the Cantor set led to an overarching scheme for the classification of all amenable C*-algebras – the so-called Elliott program. Putnam's application of the C*-algebra classification to determine the orbit structure of the Cantor set dynamical system, in terms of the quite simple C*-algebra invariant, was a striking innovation. It has changed the face of dynamical systems theory.

Gary John Schrobilgen, Department of Chemistry, McMaster University, has made important contributions in two major areas of main-group inorganic chemistry: fluorine chemistry and the polyatomic anions of the main-group elements. He is best known for his outstanding contributions to the experimentally challenging field of fluorine chemistry, encompassing the syntheses and structural characterization of a significant number of the known compounds of the noble gases as well as fluoro- and oxofluoro-derivatives of the main-group and transition elements in their highest oxidation states and at the limits of coordination. He is particularly known for the syntheses of new xenon-nitrogen bonds and for the first krypton-nitrogen and krypton-oxygen bonds and for his application of multi-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Raman spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography to the elucidation of the structures of highly unstable compounds. His work has been of importance in our understanding of structure and chemical bonding in so-called "hypervalent" molecules and in main-group ring, cage and cluster molecules.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Departments of Anatomy and of Biochemistry and Biophysics University of California, San Francisco, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of axonal pathfinding in mammals. He identified a chemoattractant activity that organizes axons in the spinal cord, purified the proteins responsible for this activity and cloned the relevant genes. He has called these proteins netrins. Netrin-1 is an attractant for commissural axons and a repellant for trochlear motor axons. This ability of mammalian netrins is reminiscent of UNC-6, and has led to a model for axon guidance involving the combined use of positive and negative cues. Tessier-Lavigne characterized two families of potential netrin receptors in mammals and demonstrated their role in axon guidance. His research has provided us with critical molecular determinants that control formation of the vertebrate nervous system.

Rabab K. Ward, Centre for Integrated Computer Systems Research, The University of British Columbia, is a leader in the application of digital signal processing theory to cable and high-definition television, medical images, restoration of astronomical images, and extraction of an infant's distress level from his/her cry signal. Being a highly accomplished researcher and a prolific inventor, she has an impressive list of publications and patents, and her work is used in various companies and laboratories worldwide. Examples include her non-intrusive method for measuring the picture quality in cable TV systems, the non-interfering video system used by the aqua-culture industry, and the fluorescence microscope system used by cell-biology researchers.

Maciej Zworski, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto, is the world's leading mathematician under the age of 40 in the difficult and fundamental area of mathematics connecting partial differential equations, mathematical physics and applied mathematics. His research provides works of reference and starting points for other mathematicians. The amazing progress in the understanding of resonances in the last ten years is due largely to Zworski. He settled a famous problem formulated by the physicist Regge thirty years ago. Zworski also found the precise location of the shadow boundary in the diffraction of linear oscillatory waves by a convex boundary, thus proving a long standing conjecture of Keller and Rubinow. This refines work dating back to the last century and was not known even on the level of formal expansions.

Bernard Fortin étudie l'impact des programmes sociaux et de la fiscalité sur les comportements individuels. Il a publié dans les meilleures revues de sciences économiques des contributions originales sur les choix de participation au marché du travail, sur les décisions de travail au noir, sur la dynamique de la participation à la sécurité du revenu ainsi que sur la substitution des travailleurs entre les programmes d'assurance-emploi et d'assurance contre les lésions professionnelles. Ses travaux, qui se fondent sur l'utilisation de méthodes quantitatives sophistiquées, intéressent les chercheurs de différentes disciplines des sciences sociales. En mai 1997, la Société canadienne de science économique lui décernait son prix triennal du meilleur chercheur canadien de langue française.

Patrick A. Molinari, professeur à la faculté de droit de l'Université de Montréal, s'est distingué comme chercheur et a fait oeuvre de pionnier dans un secteur du droit encore en voie de développement, le droit socio-sanitaire. Le Traité de droit de la santé, dont il est coauteur, présente une synthèse de l'état du droit sanitaire et fait autorité en la matière. Ses nombreuses études publiées au Canada et à l'étranger ont fait avancer la connaissance et la réflexion aussi bien sur la question de la responsabilité médicale et hospitalière que sur les problèmes d'éthique et de libertés fondamentales que pose la prestation de soins de santé. Par ses travaux, le professeur Molinari a contribué à réduire la marge d'incertitude juridique et a aidé le droit à rejoindre la science et la technique, qui le devancent inévitablement. Pour ces motifs, le professeur Molinari peut être considéré comme l'un des plus importants juristes au Canada.

Professeur de linguistique à l'Université Laval depuis 1975, Claude Poirier est l'un des fondateurs du Trésor de la langue française au Québec, regroupant une vingtaine de chercheurs, qu'il dirige depuis 1983. Ses travaux ont permis de constituer un centre de documentation et de formation de réputation internationale pour l'étude du français canadien et de donner une base scientifique à la lexicographie française au Canada. Ses publications, qui mettent l'accent sur une approche historique, culturelle et multidisciplinaire, font autorité ; les dictionnaires qu'il a produits ont été reçus avec les plus grands é1oges par les spécialistes et ont été considérés comme des réalisations audacieuses, renouvelant en profondeur l'approche traditionnelle de l'évaluation de la langue. Chercheur reconnu au pays et à l'étranger, il a obtenu d'importantes subventions de recherche et est régulièrement invité comme conférencier.

Elisabeth Schulze-Busacker est une médiéviste de réputation internationale qui occupe, en raison de l'éminente qualité de ses travaux, une position de premier ordre au plan de la recherche. Grâce à une triple formation en philologie française et romane, en littératures romanes et germaniques et en histoire, elle a pu orienter sa recherche aussi bien vers la littérature médiévale (française et occitane) et l'histoire des mentalités que vers la parémiologie ou étude des proverbes médiévaux. Les spécialistes d'Amérique et d'Europe sont unanimes à rendre hommage à l'originalité de sa recherche, à sa rigueur méthodologique et à son sens de l'innovation.