The Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced Monday that 38 researchers at York University have been awarded more than $6.75 million in NSERC grants, while nine graduate students and one post-doctoral fellow have received a total of $384,000 in funding for scholarships and fellowships.
“Our researchers are making important contributions to scientific, engineering and technological discoveries in Canada and abroad,” said Robert Haché, York’s vice-president research & innovation. “Our success rate in NSERC’s Discovery Grants and Research Tools and Instruments grants competitions has increased since last year, which reflects the strength of our innovative research programs.”
Ed Holder, minister of state (science and technology), announced that more than 3,800 researchers at 70 universities received funding that will further discoveries in a full range of fields in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These awards comprise the 2015 competition results for NSERC’s Discovery Grants, Discovery Accelerator Supplements, Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships, NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships and Postdoctoral Fellowships Program.
In the Discovery Grants and Discovery Accelerator Supplements Competition, the funding was granted for research programs covering a wide range of topics, including:
- Searching and analyzing big data: context-sensitive and task-aware approaches
- fMRI and patient studies of remote spatial and episodic memory
- Renewable energy production and chemical recovery from municipal and industrial wastewater using biofilm processes
- Multisensory interactions and the representation of the body in the brain
- Micro instrumentation for space
The Discovery Grants Program supports ongoing programs of research in every scientific and engineering discipline. Discovery Accelerator Supplements, valued at $120,000 over three years, are awarded to researchers whose research proposals suggest and explore high-risk, novel or potentially transformative concepts and lines of inquiry, and are likely to have impact by contributing to groundbreaking advances in the proposed areas of research.
York researchers were also awarded $657,955 in funding in the Research Tools & Instruments Competition. The funding enhances the discovery, innovation and training capability of university researchers in the natural sciences and engineering by supporting the purchase of research equipment and installations.
For more information on the funding, visit the NSERC website.