In honor of Priscilla Bullitt Collins, the late chair of the Bullitt Foundation, the Trustees have established the Bullitt Environmental Prize.

The first of these annual prizes was awarded to Aimy Ming Jii Bazylak at a dinner the evening of Tuesday, November 13, 2007.

The Bullitt Environmental Prize will be awarded each year to an outstanding graduate student at a university in the Pacific Northwest. Recipients will have overcome disadvantaged backgrounds, compiled sterling academic records, been endorsed by key professors, and demonstrated promise of emerging as environmental leaders. The Bullitt Environmental Prize will carry an award of $100,000, spread over two years.

Aimy is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria. Deeply committed to combating climate change, she plans to devote her career to improving the performance of fuel cells—thus facilitating the transition to a hydrogen economy. Her PhD thesis is focused on microscale fuel cells.

An exceptional student, Aimy has already done important work in plasma physics, nanotechnology, microfabrication, and computational fluid dynamics.

Aimy gives frequent talks about energy and climate change at high schools, civic organizations, and business associations. From childhood, she has been an avid advocate of locally grown food and of a lifestyle based on reducing, reusing, and recycling. She traces her environmental roots to her grandparents, who grew most of their own food and taught her to respect the earth. She supports the Valhalla Wilderness Society and the David Suzuki Foundation, and she has worked with the local Kiwanis Club to raise funds for affordable housing for seniors on fixed incomes.

Aimy seems destined for an important role in tomorrow’s world. We hope you will join us in congratulating this exceptional young woman as we award her the first Bullitt Environmental Prize