University of Winnipeg researchers received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) that will enable $1,462,500 in research projects. This funding comes via the Discovery Grants Program.
Discovery Grants were awarded to six UWinnipeg researchers, totaling $815,000. The recipients are (in alphabetical order):
- Yangjun Chen, Department of Applied Computer Science, On the Evaluation of Reachability and Sub-Pattern Recognition Queries in Very Large Graph Databases;
- Sanoji Wijenayake, Department of Biology, The Life-Long Effects of Maternal Milk: Programming Offspring Development;
- Jean-Pierre Desforges, Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Tackling Arctic Toxicology Challenges Using In Vitro and In Silico Approaches to Characterize and Predict Organism-Level Effects of Chemical Stressors;
- Jacques Tardif, Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Tree Rings as Indicators of Hydrological Changes and Past Climate;
- Matthew Wiersma, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Structure of Hermitian Groups and Group C*-Algebras; and
- Stephanie Bugden, Department of Psychology, Mapping the Neural Development of Symbolic Number Knowledge.
Discovery Development Grants, which total $60,000 over 2 years were awarded to:
- Sara Good, Department of Biology, Genetic Pathways Underlying Intestinal Inflammation and Sex Determination in Vertebrates; and
- Srimathie Indraratne, Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Immobilizing Vanadium with Nano-Oxide and Biochar Combined Amendment and Investigating the Fate of Amendment-Vanadium Complexes at Varying Geochemical Environments of Soils.
Jean-Pierre Desforges was also awarded the Northern Research Supplements grant that comes with additional funding for his research project, as well as the Early Career Researcher – Discovery Launch Supplement that was also given to Sanoji Wijenayake and Stephanie Bugden.
Two UWinnipeg physicists were given Subatomic Physics Discovery Grants totaling $475,000:
- Russell Mammei, Department of Physics, Fundamental Measurements with Cold Neutrons: Nab and BL3 Experiments; and
- Evan McDonough, Department of Physics, Dark Matter in Extreme Environments
NSERC is a federal agency that helps make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for all Canadians. The agency supports some 30,000 post-secondary students and postdoctoral fellows in their advanced studies. It promotes discovery by funding more than 12,000 professors every year and fosters innovation by encouraging more than 1,500 Canadian companies to participate and invest in post-secondary research projects.
The University of Winnipeg gratefully acknowledges the funding received from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund in aid of research infrastructure. Every year, the federal government invests in research excellence in the areas of health sciences, engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities through its three granting agencies. The Research Support Fund (RSF) reinforces this research investment by helping institutions ensure that their federally funded research projects are conducted in world-class facilities with the best equipment and administrative support available.
