$2.4 million for Canada Research Chairs at Concordia

Alex Bitektine, associate professor of management at the John Molson School of Business (JMSB), is the new CRC in Institutions and Strategic Entrepreneurship. He is interested in how corporate organizations affect the micro-level factors that facilitate entrepreneurial action and help entrepreneurs to gain legitimacy in their business activities.

His aim is to impart important insights to policy-makers, entrepreneurs and their stakeholders to improve the quality of decisions essential for economic growth, technological development and job creation.

Biology professor Michael Hallett from the Faculty of Arts and Science has spent a large part of his career developing bioinformatics tools that provide a global perspective on the dynamics of breast cancer.

As the CRC in Bioinformatics Algorithms, he will look at how to integrate machine learning with synthetic biology to understand and manipulate fungal organisms, advancing our knowledge and understanding of cancer in general.

Nadia Myre is a studio arts professor in Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts and an internationally acclaimed artist. She creates innovative developments in Indigenous visual arts and scholarship by bringing together ancestral and contemporary methods of working to facilitate meaningful, intersectional exchanges between Indigenous peoples and colonial settler society.

As the CRC in Indigenous Art Practice, Myre will examine the histories of cross-cultural objects and ideas between European and Indigenous cultures to further critical inquiry into material practices.

Jean-Philippe Gouin, a professor of psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science, has been renewed as the CRC in Chronic Stress and Health. In his work, Gouin examines the psychosocial factors that either increase or decrease stress faced by caregivers and other individuals exposed to chronic stress.

His research will improve the quality of life for Canadians by helping to develop ways to reduce the negative psychological and biological consequences associated with chronic stress.