NSERC FUNDING: $9.9 million for 63 Concordia projects

Major new federal funding will support a wide variety of groundbreaking research projects at Concordia in the areas of natural sciences and engineering.

On September 8, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced a total of $9,948,669 for 63 projects at Concordia. The funding, the majority of which comes from NSERC's Discovery Grants program, supports Concordia's research expertise in disciplines ranging from biology to geography to computer science.

For Christophe Guy, vice-president of Research and Graduate Studies, the increased funding is a healthy sign on the road to Concordia’s strategic goal of ‘Doubling Our Research’’’.

“Discovery Grants provide research program funding for faculty members in the natural sciences and engineering and is the base funding that usually drives the core of their fundamental research, with a strong emphasis on student training,” he says.

“This year’s increase in funding points to the fact that Concordia’s engineering and natural science research activity continues to grow and have an impact.”

Of note, seven Concordians received awards of $50,000 or more per year, for a five-year-period, in Discovery Grant funding for their projects:

• Amir Aghdam  (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) for the reconfiguration and control of multi-agent communications networks
• Andreas Athienitis (Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Concordia University Research Chair in Integration of Solar Energy Systems into Buildings) for modelling, designing and operating multi-functional solar systems
• Mourad Debbabi (Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering and Concordia University Research Chair in Information Systems Security) for analyzing big data security to improve cyber threat intelligence
• Vincent Martin (Department of Biology and Concordia University Research Chair in Microbial Engineering and Synthetic Biology) for building biosensors for synthetic biology
• Damon Matthews (Department of Geography, Planning and Environment and Concordia University Research Chair in Climate Science and Sustainability) for studying climate response spatial patterns to cumulative carbon emissions
• Hoi Dick Ng (Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering and Concordia University Research Chair in Applied Combustion and Fuels) for investigating detonation dynamics in chemically reactive energy systems
• Theodore Stathopoulos (Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering) for assessing the effects of wind on buildings

Four Concordia researchers were awarded a total of $480,000 from NSERC’s Discovery Accelerator Supplement (DAS), in addition to their grants. The DAS program provides substantial and timely resources to speed up progress and maximize the impact of superior research investigations:

• Lyes Kadem (Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering) to examine flow configurations in implantable medical devices
• Alisa Piekny (Department of Biology and director of Centre for Microscopy and Cellular Imaging) to continue her study of mechanisms that control cell division
• Brian Vermeire (Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering) to investigate methods for vortex simulation in aerodynamic analysis and design
• Rolf Wüthrich (Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering) to assess electrochemical manufacturing technologies for Industry 4.0

Additionally, six researchers received a total $681,669 from NSERC’s Research Tools and Instruments Grants program: Yves Gélinas and Rafik Naccache (Chemistry and Biochemisty), and Damon Matthews (Geography, Planning and Environment) from the Faculty of Arts and Science, as well as Ahmed Kishk (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Ali Dolatabadi and Ramin Sedaghati (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) from the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science.

Find out more about research at Concordia. For a complete list of Concordia's newly funded projects, consult the NSERC website.