January 22, 2008

SUDBURY RECEIVES $17.9 MILLION FOR GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT RESEARCH

Today’s announcement represents part of the second round of funding under the Ontario Research Fund’s Research Excellence program. In this round, the government is providing $17,974,390 to a world-class research and innovation project that will be conducted at the SNOLAB physics research facility in Sudbury. Funding will be matched by industry and other partners participating in the project.

Astroparticle Physics Projects at SNOLAB

Discovering the nature of the universe

Lead researcher: Dr. Anthony J. Noble
Total project cost: $53,923,170
Provincial funding: $17,974,390

Key private sector partners:
Vale-INCO

Researchers from Queen’s University, in collaboration with Carleton University and Laurentian University, will set out to confirm longstanding questions of the Universe – like how it came to be and how it is evolving.

The goal of the project is to create the ideal conditions to observe invisible dark matter particles (left over relics from the Big-Bang) known to make up about 25 per cent of the mass of the universe, which scientists around the world know very little about. The research will take place at  SNOLAB, a state-of-the-art facility for astroparticle physics that is the lowest radioactivity research location ever created. In this unique ultra-clean environment two kilometres underground in Vale-Inco’s Creighton mine in Sudbury, it’s possible to make measurements that are impossible anywhere else in the world – and to observe the rare, but fundamental, scientific phenomena that take place only a few times a year.

This investment builds on the Ontario government’s previous commitment of $8.73 million – $5.6 million through the Ontario Research Fund and $3.13 million through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund – to expand the SNOLAB research facility, announced in August 2007.

For more information about the original Neutrino Observatory experiment, please visit http://www.mri.gov.on.ca/english/news/Cryo082107.asp. 

Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence Program

This second round of funding under the Research Excellence program will invest  $114,709,614 to support 19 world-class projects at nine Ontario universities, institutes and hospitals. Funding
will be matched by 107 major industry and other partners participating in the projects.

For more information about the Ontario Research Fund, please visit www.ontario.ca/innovation.

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