UBC Sauder School of Business Professor Emeritus Yair Wand has won the prestigious Peter P. Chen Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field of conceptual modeling.
According to the selection committee, Prof. Wand has led ground-breaking research studies in the areas of transforming representation models into working information systems, the ontological expressiveness of design grammars and ontological analysis. In addition, his “…contributions to the community as an engaged academic teacher inspiring enthusiasm for conceptual modeling in undergraduate and graduate studies” was highlighted, as was his extensive publication record in high-quality academic journals.
Wand is only the 10th person to receive the award and joins a select group of distinguished researchers and academics from across the globe. As part of the award, Wand has been invited to give a keynote speech at the Entity Relationship International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, to be held November 6-9, 2017, in Valencia, Spain.
“I did not expect that my work would be so nicely recognized by the conceptual modelling community,” says Wand, who recently retired and continues to work as a Professor Emeritus at the UBC Sauder School of Business.
“Peter Chen is a pioneer in software engineering for his development of the entity-relationship model, which is almost universally taught to students learning database design,” explains Ron Cenfetelli, professor and chair of UBC Sauder’s Management Information Systems division. “As such, this award is highly regarded in the field of conceptual modeling and is a wonderful testament to Yair’s tremendous contributions to the field.”
The selection process for the award involved five main criteria:
- How well the nominee has helped advance the field of conceptual modeling with intellectual contributions;
- Participation in the organization of related meetings and conferences and participation in editorial boards of related journals;
- How effectively the nominee has mentored doctoral students in conceptual modeling, produced researchers from their labs, and also helped mentor young people in the field;
- The extent to which the nominee has contributed to technology transfer, commercialization and industrial projects; and,
- The extent to which the nominee’s work is visible to and has diffused into the international community.
