Thirty-eight McGill research projects have received federal grants through the CFI's John R. Evans Leaders Fund, which will provide them with state-of-the art research infrastructure needed to foster innovation.
The Government of Canada through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) recently announced their funding investment of more than $96 million to support 377 new research infrastructure projects at 55 institutions from coast to coast. The CFI also announced the funding of projects through the John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) in partnership with the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Program, investing $4.6 million in 21 Chairs at 16 institutions to provide them with the innovative tools they need to pursue their valuable work.
Thirty-eight McGill research projects have received a combined total of $9.3M in federal grants through this round of JELF. The fund helps universities attract top talent in diverse fields of research by providing them with the highly specialized research infrastructure they need to be leaders in their field. The recipients will also receive matching funds from the Quebec government for their research endeavours.
Professors Jörg Hermann Fritz and Corinne Maurice of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Bastien Castagner of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, received $352,778 in JELF funding for their project on harnessing microbiota metabolism for human health benefits. The project will focus on the ill-defined relationship between bacteria in the human gut, metabolism and the immune system. The research will help design new, more effective drugs to treat inflammatory bowel diseases, obesity, asthma and other chronic diseases.
One McGill project received $520,000 in JELF funding, in partnership with the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program. Professor Stephen Lomber of the Department of Physiology and Canada Research Chair in Brain Plasticity and Development, received $520,000 from the JELF and CRC partnership to establish an internationally recognized laboratory with state-of-the-art facilities for the study of brain plasticity and auditory neuroscience. The laboratory will help researchers understand how the brain processes sound, and how to best design therapeutic strategies for the 300,000 Canadians burdened with profound hearing loss.
McGill CRC-JELF recipient:
Hearing Loss and Restoration Laboratory
Professor Stephen Lomber of the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$520,000 from the CRC-JELF partnership; $520,000 matching provincial funds.
List of McGill JELF recipients:
Creation of a Multidisciplinary Sleep Laboratory at the Neuro
Professors Julien Doyon and Birgit Frauscher of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, are the principal investigators.
$254, 296 from JELF; $254, 296 matching provincial funds.
Harnessing Microbiota Metabolism for Human Health Benefits
Professors Jörg Hermann Fritz and Corinne Maurice of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Bastien Castagner of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, are the principal investigators.
$352,778 from JELF; $352,778 matching provincial funds.
Multi-scale in Vivo Imaging of Biological Systems
Professor Abigail Gerhold of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, is the principal investigator.
$271,990 from JELF; $271,990 matching provincial funds.
MAP-PRO: An Electronic Database and Learning Hub for Canadian Early Psychosis Services
Professors Srividya Iyer and Manuela Ferrari of the Department of Psychiatry, Medicine and Health Sciences, are the principal investigators.
$80,000 from JELF; $80,000 matching provincial funds.
McGill Soil Biogeochemistry and Ecology Laboratory
Professor Cynthia Kallenbach of the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$150,000 from JELF; $150,000 matching provincial funds.
Subsurface Hydrogeochemistry and Fluid Flow
Professor Mary Kang of the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$475,360 from JELF; $475,360 matching provincial funds.
Combined Microreactor Mass Spectrometry Infrastructure for Catalyst Characterization
Professor Jan Kopyscinski of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$120,000 from JELF; $120,000 matching provincial funds.
Fast Scalable Deep Learning for Sensitive Big Data in Healthcare and Social Contexts
Professors Yue Li, William Hamilton and Reihaneh Rabbany of the School of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, are the principal investigators.
$120,000 from JELF; $120,000 matching provincial funds.
Click Chemistry for Precision Medicine
Professor Nathan Luedtke of the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, is the principal investigator.
$285,000 from JELF; $285,000 matching provincial funds.
Conformational Dynamics of Complex Proteins in Health and Diseases
Professor Gergely Lukacs of the Department of Physiology, Professor Kalle Gehring of the Department of Biochemistry, and Jean-Francois Trempe of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, are the principal investigators.
$592,636 from JELF; $592,636 matching provincial funds.
Antagonistic Inter-bacterial Interactions
Professor Jennifer Ronholm of the Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$143,180 from JELF; $143,180 matching provincial funds.
Blood-based Biomarkers for Ageing-related Brain Diseases
Professors Pedro Rosa-Neto of the Department of Psychiatry, Gerhard Multhaup of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and Angela Genge of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, are the principal investigators.
$417,175 from JELF; $417,175 matching provincial funds.
Infrastructure for Advanced Arctic and Urban Climate Modelling in Support of Climate-resilient Engineering Systems
Professor Laxmi Sushama of the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$135,180 from JELF; $135,180 matching provincial funds.
CoDEx: Computational Design Exploratory
Professor Theodora Vardouli of the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$78,807 from JELF; $78,807 matching provincial funds.
Metabolism of Stress-regulated Genes in Health and Disease using Single Molecule Imaging
Professor Maria Vera Ugalde of the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, is the principal investigator.
$200,000 from JELF; $200,000 matching provincial funds.
Drivers of Breast Cancer Progression Identified within Arm-level Somatic Copy Number Alterations
Professor Logan Walsh of the Department of Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$109,179 from JELF; $109,179 matching provincial funds.
Development of Biodegradable Functional Materials from Low-value Biomass for Food and Agricultural Applications
Professor Yixiang Wang of the Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$121,500 from JELF; $121,500 matching provincial funds.
The Role of Lipoma Preferred Partner (LPP) in Regulating Breast Cancer Progression
Professors Claire Brown of the Department of Physiology and Peter Siegel of the Departments of Medicine, Biochemistry, and Anatomy and Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, are the principal investigators.
$744,304 from JELF; $744,304 matching provincial funds.
Muscle Stem Cell Biology in Health and Disease
Professor Natasha Chang of the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$149,582 from JELF; $149,582 matching provincial funds.
NIR Imaging Platform for Biophotonic Technologies Relying on New Dormant Sensors/Sensitizers
Professor Gonzalo Cosa of the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, is the principal investigator.
$172,875 from JELF; $172,875 matching provincial funds.
A Path to Anti-aging Drugs
Professor Siegfried Hekimi of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, is the principal investigator.
$179,196 from JELF; $179,196 matching provincial funds.
Markers to Market: A Platform to Translate Quantitative Genomics Data into Field-ready, Value-added Commodity Cultivars
Professor Valerio Hoyos-Villegas of the Department of Plant Science, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$152,062 from JELF; $152,062 matching provincial funds.
Mechanism and Therapy for Autism Spectrum Disorders Associated with Copy Number Variants
Professor Wei-Hsiang Huang of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$169,634 from JELF; $169,634 matching provincial funds.
Development of Strategies to Better Understand and Control the Long-term Side Effects of Radiotherapy
Professor John Kildea of the Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$87,579 from JELF; $87,579 matching provincial funds.
4D Immersive Scene Capture and Processing
Professor Derek Nowrouzezahrai of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$78,020 from JELF; $78,020 matching provincial funds.
Mapping Dopamine Circuits in the Healthy and Diseased Brain
Professor Jean-Francois Poulin of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$294,592 from JELF; $294,592 matching provincial funds.
UHPLC-MS to Develop Technologies to Control the Presence and Fate of Contaminants in Natural & Engineered Water Systems
Professor Viviane Yargeau of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$406,300 from JELF; $406,300 matching provincial funds.
Integrated Facility for Research on Large Animals Species
Professors Vilceu Bordignon of the Department of Animal Science and Luis B Agellon, of the Department of School of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, are the principal investigators.
$800,000 from JELF; $800,000 matching provincial funds.
Exercise and Nutrition to Support Skeletal Muscle Heath Across the Lifespan
Professor Tyler Churchward-Venne of the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, Faculty of Education, is the principal investigators.
$344,957 from JELF; $344,957 matching provincial funds.
Neuroecology of Spatial Behaviour Lab
Professor Mélanie Guigueno of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, is the principal investigator.
$165,000 from JELF; $165,000 matching provincial funds.
Biotechnological Production of High-value Compounds
Professor Codruta Ignea of the Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$140,000 from JELF; $140,000 matching provincial funds.
Atomic Layer Deposition of Electrochemical Energy Storage Devices
Professor Emmeline Kao of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$260,101 from JELF; $260,101 matching provincial funds.
High Throughput Monitoring of Cell Metabolism using a Modernized Tissue Culture Facility
Professor Ryan Mailloux of the School of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$234,500 from JELF; $234,500 matching provincial funds.
Anishinaabe Stories Database
Professor Aaron Mills of the Faculty of Law, is the principal investigator.
$46,961 from JELF; $46,961 matching provincial funds.
New Computational Techniques for Modeling of Disordered Molecular Systems for Applications in Nano- and Bio- engineering
Professor Yelena Simine of the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, is the principal investigator.
$80,000 from JELF; $80,000 matching provincial funds.
Circulating Immune Cells and Interactions in the Nervous System
Professor Jo Anne Stratton of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, is the principal investigator.
$141,863 from JELF; $141,863 matching provincial funds.
Heat Transfer in Thermal Energy Technologies
Professor Mélanie Tétreault-Friend of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, is the principal investigator.
$233,308 from JELF; $233,308 matching provincial funds.
Read CFI’s official press release.
This article was first published on 25 August by McGill University.
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