On May 4, Rob Corless was invited to give the opening talk at the Southern Ontario Numerical Analysis Day at the University of Toronto. He spoke on "Optimal Backward Error and The Leaky Bucket". Eunice Chan also attended, and gave a talk titled, "Algebraic Linearizations of Matrix Polynomials". Professor Kenyan Wu, of Chongqing U and the Chinese Academy [...]
This year's Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences was held at the University of Regina. Separate sessions for the Canadian Philosophical Association and the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics will be held at the beginning of June at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Rotman Institute members took part in numerous sessions held in [...]
This month Western celebrated the official opening of our new building, the Western Interdisciplinary Research Building. In addition to the Rotman Institute, the WIRB hosts the Brain and Mind Institute, BrainsCAN, dry laboratories, a public plaza, and teaching & research space. Members of the Western and London communities attended the opening ceremony, including Kate Young, [...]
by Meghan Winsby Julian Savulescu is Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Professor of Practical Ethics, and Fellow of St Cross College. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and the author of over 250 publications, including 2012’s Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral [...]
The month of March was packed with Rotman speaker events! Over the course of the month we hosted Jenann Ismael, Ned Block, Stathis Psillos, Julian Savulescu, and Laura Franklin-Hall as part of our annual speaker series. We also hosted a public panel discussion at Wolf Hall that included Françoise Baylis, David Edgell, Julian Savulescu, and Anthony [...]
After launching a very successful photo contest last year, the Rotman Institute was honoured (and excited!) to hold our 2nd Annual Philosophical Photography Contest. As before, people were invited to submit photos that managed to capture an abstract philosophical concept in a creative way. This year we received submissions that tackled a range [...]
From the end of February through early March, Jenann Ismael, Professor of Philosophy at University of Arizona, came to the Institute for a two-week stay. On February 28 Dr. Ismael took part in a Rotman Dialogue--an informal discussion of her recent book, "How Physics Makes Us Free", led by Adam Koberinski. The event was a [...]
This past month we hosted our first talk since moving into our new office space on campus in the Western Interdisciplinary Research Building. On January 25th, Dr. Gillian Crozier, an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Canada Research Chair in Environment, Culture and Values at Laurentian University, presented a talk titled Revisiting the Social License [...]
For the final edition of Rotman member news for 2017, our members have several important updates to share. One exciting announcement regards Derek Oswick who was awarded a 2016 Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Doctoral Scholarship. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently announced the November 2016 awards on their site here. Please join [...]
It's the final day before we depart for the winter break, and before doing so we'd like to take a moment to recognize the three Rotman Institute doctoral students who successfully defended their theses this past year. Their names, along with the titles of their dissertations, are listed below. John Jenkinson - A New Framework for [...]
