BACKGROUNDER
July 14, 2008
STRENGTHENING ONTARIO’S INNOVATION ECONOMY
Funding world-class research is part of Ontario’s plan to build an innovation economy.
Ontario’s universities, colleges, hospitals and research institutes play a vital role in the government’s five-point plan to ensure Ontario remains at the forefront of the global knowledge-based economy by supporting cutting-edge research and developing world-class researchers.
The Early Researcher Awards program (ERA) helps promising, recently-appointed Ontario researchers build their research teams of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, research assistants and associates. The goal of the program is to improve Ontario’s ability to attract and retain the best and brightest research talent from around the world.
The ERA program is a key part of Ontario’s Innovation Agenda. Supported by close to $3 billion in spending over eight years, the Ontario Innovation Agenda is building Ontario’s innovation economy on the strength of our province’s creative environment, diverse culture, highly skilled workforce, world-class educational system and internationally recognized research community.
MCMASTER UNIVERSITY EARLY RESEARCHER AWARDS RECIPIENTS
Dr. Brian Kenneth Coombes
Studying Intestinal Pathogens
Dr. Brian Coombes's team is researching how to reduce serious gastrointestinal illness caused by the presence of certain bacteria in domesticated livestock. The researchers are discovering ways to disable the ability of these bacteria to infect the animals, by blocking the bacteria before they attack healthy cells.
Dr. Mohit Bhandari
Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip Fractures
Dr. Mohit Bhandari and his research team are researching better ways to perform hip surgeries, with the goal of reducing the number of post-surgery hip fractures, accidents and other complications that result from common surgical procedures. With hip fractures and related hospitalization expected to increase as the population ages, this research will help to improve the well-being of Ontario’s seniors and reduce costs to the health-care system.
Dr. Greg Slater
Radiocarbon Analysis for Organic Contaminants
Compound specific radiocarbon analysis is an innovative new approach to investigate and monitor organic contaminants in environmental systems. Advances in our understanding of the sources of organic contaminants, where they end up, and how long they persist are essential to environmental policy — and to developing solutions to pollution. Using this new approach, Dr. Greg Slater and his research team will work to improve our ability to understand where organic contaminants come from and how long they take to degrade, and as a result improve our ability to predict and prevent associated health risks.
Dr. Anne Frances Klassen
Understanding the Caregiving Process for Immigrant Parents of Children with Cancer
While immigrants make up an increasing proportion of the Canadian population, they have been largely overlooked in care-giving research. The goal of Dr. Anne Klassen and her research team are to explore first-generation South Asian and Chinese parents’ experience of caring for a child with cancer, and to describe the implications of their experiences for pediatric oncology services, programs, and policy.
Dr. Andrew Knights
Building a Better Silicon Chip
Dr. Andrew Knights and his research team are working to address the ever-increasing demand for information bandwidth to power the next generation of communications devices. The research will attempt to integrate light and electricity on a single silicon chip, creating a new, faster and more efficient form of processing information.
Dr. Bartosz Protas
Math Modeling, Theory and Advanced Manufacturing
Dr. Protas’ team of interdisciplinary researchers will use mathematical modelling and scientific computing improve our understanding of fluid mechanics – used in many industrial and commercial applications involving fluid and gases manipulation. One industry that could benefit from the research is the automotive industry, where industrial partners can use the results to improve fabrication and assembly technologies.
Dr. Megumi Harada
The Geometry of Classical and Quantum Physics
The focus of Dr. Harada’s project is symplectic geometry, a field of mathematics related to both classical and quantum physics. An important benefit of this branch of geometry is that it can use a geometric object to represent a physical system, and reveal complex characteristics of that system. Dr. Megumi Harada and her research team will study the symmetries in the geometry of certain physical systems in order to reveal their properties: physical systems such as the structure of DNA or the orbit of Earth around the sun.
Dr. Xu-Dong Zhu
Studying DNA Sequences in Cancer Cells
See also:
- News Release: Driving The Innovation Economy At McMaster
