Federal funding energizes SFU research
Rosemary Hotell, science faculty assistant, 778.782.3772, rosemary_hotell@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca
The development of high performance, low-cost fuel cells, faster and more efficient computers and global warming-tolerant Arctic char are among five Simon Fraser University projects receiving newly announced federal funding.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) awarded just over $2.1 million collectively to the five SFU projects as a result of its 2009-2010 Strategic Project Grants and New Media Initiative competition. The university submitted 28 applications to the competition, achieving its greatest success rate (66.67 per cent) in the New Media category.
NSERC awarded $18.3 million to 122 research projects across the country.
The following are the SFU project leaders and professors receiving grants:
Michael Eikerling, chemistry, Design and Integration of Nanostructured Catalyst Layers for PEM Fuel Cells, $574,140. The project involves developing catalyst layers with novel nanostructured substrate architectures to boost the performance and lower the cost of fuel cell technology.
Lesley Shannon, engineering science, A Configurable Profiling Core for Multicore Processors, $248,963. Shannon is co-designing computer hardware that will simplify and speed up the ability of computer programs to assess and allocate resources to run themselves.
Willie Davidson, molecular biology and biochemistry, Integrated Genomic Technologies into an Atlantic Salmon Broodstock Development Program, $595,760. The funding enables Davidson to further his work with private and federal collaborators on developing an aquaculture broodstock for (Arctic char) Atlantic salmon that is ideally suited to increasingly warm aquaculture conditions in British Columbia.
Philippe Pasquier, Musical Metacreation: Software Creativity and Creative Software, $340,000. Pasquier, an artificial intelligence researcher, and Arne Eigenfeldt, an SFU computer music composer are exploring and defining the boundaries of musical metacreation. A metacreation is software that uses artificial intelligence and cognitive modeling to display human-like creative behaviours. Their grant has leveraged another $148,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Lyn Bartram, Meaning from Motion for Interaction and Visualization, $368,680. Along with choreographer Thecla Schiphorst and game studies professor Magy Seif El-Nasr, Bartram is exploring the use of motion to communicate information, express emotion and stimulate visualization in immersive environments and gaming.
Researchers whose work dovetails with the federal government’s research funding priorities faired the best in this competition. Those priorities are advanced communications and information management; healthy environment and ecosystems; sustainable energy systems and competitive manufacturing.
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