Three athletes are among a 23-member entourage of McGill graduates and students headed to Rio de Janeiro to serve in an official capacity at the Summer Olympic Games, Aug. 5-21. The athletes, all from Montreal, include wrestler Dorothy Yeats, an engineering student, and a pair of fencers – both recent graduates – Maximilien Van Haaster (B.Ed. Kinesiology ’16) and Joseph Polossifakis (B. Com ’14).

Read full article: McGill Publications, August 3, 2016 

Le parcours de l’escrimeur, spécialiste du sabre, Joseph Polossifakis vers les Jeux olympiques de Rio n’a pas été de tout repos. Le Montréalais de 25 ans a raconté son aventure à Métro.

The ‘biggest loser’ in weight loss groups is more motivational than the average group weight loss, new research from the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University finds.

Assistant Professor Nathan Yang found that the top performer has an encouraging effect, acting as an inspirational target that doesn’t alienate those who fail to reach it.

Read full article: BDaily, August 3, 2016 

Brittany Klumak, student of the Graduate Certificate in the Professional Accounting (GCPA) program, has been selected among her graduating class as this year’s recipient of the C. Douglas Mellor Prize for academic excellence.

The prize, which is valued at $2,300, is named after Douglas Mellor, the first Executive Director of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Quebec, now  the Ordre des comptables agrées du Québec, and is awarded each year to honor Mellor’s enduring contributions to both McGill University and his profession.

You probably know people who have had some sort of cancer. You also know many more who will be getting these diseases—you just don’t know who they are. So when you “Run for Cancer”, the money likely goes for those people who have the disease, to find a cure, rather than to the investigation of cause, so that many more people needn’t get the disease in the first place. We certainly need to celebrate concern for the ill, but shouldn’t we show equivalent concern for the healthy, so that they don’t get ill? Is not an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure?

From the rise of social media campaigns such as #blacklivesmatter and #oscarssowhite to the anti-immigration rhetoric fuelling the Brexit and U.S. presidential campaigns, race has dominated conversations worldwide in 2016.

There’s a long-standing tradition among businesses spanning industries to try and control the narrative around what they do “and say this is the truth and this is our version and our version is correct,” says Dror Etzion, associate professor of strategy and organizations at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management in Montreal.

This year, hundreds of eager entrepreneurs competed to win $200,000 in funding, and for the opportunity to pitch their ideas to experienced investors and mentors. The participants also met legendary and inspirational startup celebrities from companies such as Reddit, Shopify and Oculus.