Photo courtesy of Concordia University
Concordia researchers and graduate students will receive over $7 million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in the next five years.
Among the more than 3,500 researchers and students supported by the Canadian government, 43 are Concordia researchers and four are Concordia graduate students.
The government expects this significant investment to drive innovation as well as economic prosperity in Canada.
Support for the researchers is provided mainly through Discovery Grants, NSERC’s longest running program, which rewards excellence in fields such as engineering, psychology, biology and mathematics.
Thirty-nine Concordia researchers received individual monetary grants totalling about $5.5 million. This will advance cutting edge projects in areas as vast as adapting to environmental change, highway construction, cloud data design and handwriting recognition.
Also through Discovery Grants, four Concordia researchers were awarded research equipment grant funding — such as for several new lasers — valuing almost $500,000 in total.
Three of the university’s winning researchers — Dylan Fraser of the Department of Biology, Muthukumaran Packirisamy of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Subhash Rakheja of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering — received additional grants of $120,000 each over three years through the Discovery Accelerator Supplements Program, meant to fast-track the progress of particularly exciting projects.
“The highly competitive funding for discovery research raises the bar for science and engineering excellence in Canada, and unleashes the creative potential of our researchers,” said Janet Walden, chief operating officer of NSERC.
“Building on this dynamic research environment, NSERC’s scholarships and fellowships are attracting and cultivating new talent with the skills necessary for the growth of our knowledge-based economy.”
See the full list of Concordia Research Grants recipients at the NSERC website.