$4.5 million to advance Concordia’s research strengths

Recently, Ed Holder, Canada’s minister of state for science and technology, announced more than $333 million for new research infrastructure through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) Innovation Fund, which supports transformative, world-leading research infrastructure projects.

A new platform to advance knowledge and training in synthetic biology

Concordia professor Vincent Martin secured $2,472,169 from the fund for the creation of a new genome foundry meant to address bottlenecks in the synthetic biology research cycle. The Genome Foundry for Synthetic Biology will provide automation that will accelerate the building and testing of engineered biological devices, parts or systems. 

The new infrastructure will be embedded in Concordia’s Centre for Applied Synthetic Biology (CASB), a dynamic, multi-disciplinary research group of 14 principle investigators from five research institutions, whose expertise includes molecular biology, microbiology, cell biology, biochemistry, chemical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and bioengineering.

Over the next five years this new facility and associated research program will create high-quality training opportunities.

“A disruptive technology, synthetic biology has been identified by the World Economic Forum as one of the top five emerging issues that will shape our future,” says Graham Carr, Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies. “The Concordia foundry will be one of a handful of state-of-the-art facilities with high throughput capacity world-wide, enabling researchers from across Canada to compete at the leading edge of research that has huge potential to benefit society.”

Surface engineering solutions for aerospace

Professors Christian Moreau and Ali Dolatabadi from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, along with academics from the Université de Sherbrooke and École Polytechnique de Montréal will collaborate in a McGill University led project that seeks to revolutionize surface engineering for the aerospace industry.

Concordia will receive $2.03 million to equip the existing Thermal Spray and Multiphase Flow Laboratory with cutting edge thermal and cold spray technologies.

Find out more about Concordia’s Centre for Applied Synthetic Biology (CASB).

Find out more about the Concordia Institute of Aerospace Design and Innovation (CIADI).