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NEWS RELEASE
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For Immediate Release Feb. 23, 2011 |
Office of the Premier
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YEAR OF SCIENCE LEGACY, RESEARCH AWARDS ANNOUNCED
VANCOUVER – Over $6.9 million in research funding will be provided to some of the province’s top researchers through the Natural Resources and Applied Sciences (NRAS) Endowment, Premier Gordon Campbell announced today at an event celebrating excellence in B.C. research and innovation.
Premier Campbell also announced a further $7 million for a Year of Science legacy that will go towards graduate fellowships in the coming months through the Leading Edge Endowment Fund.
“B.C. researchers are making significant contributions to our future quality of life and the economy of British Columbia,” said Premier Campbell. “Their pioneering work continues to advance leading research and innovation projects with the potential to provide lasting benefits and make a huge difference to people’s lives.”
A total of 24 researchers received funding for their projects in the areas of natural resources, applied science and engineering. Among the broad spectrum of technologies that received funding were “smart” sensors for vehicle tires, an “optical biopsy” device for the early detection of cancer, a method of monitoring fish stocks using satellite imagery and new ways to improve the safety, economics and sustainability of B.C.’s surface mines.
“We are immensely proud of the work being undertaken by these researchers and their colleagues,” said Science and Universities Minister Ida Chong. “Their projects have enormous potential both here in British Columbia and worldwide.”
The NRAS Endowment was established in 2006 with a $50-million investment by the B.C. government. The mandate of the fund is to build research and development, advanced training, technology transfer and commercialization capacity in B.C. in engineering, natural resources and the applied sciences. The BCFRST Foundation has developed the research programs in collaboration with the B.C. Innovation Council (BCIC), the Province’s lead agency dedicated to strengthening B.C.’s knowledge economy through projects and programs that develop entrepreneurs and commercialize technologies. The evaluation of proposals and the administration of the funds are managed by the BCIC.
“There is incredible work being done in our province as evident by the breadth of research being recognized here today,” said Danny Robinson, CEO of BCIC. “I look forward to tracking the progress of these bright minds and the resulting companies that will no doubt contribute to our economic development through jobs, training, investment and more.”
Through the endowment fund, the Province makes targeted investments in applied research projects with potential to provide social, environmental and economic benefit to B.C. These investments are chosen by a select group of national and international experts, in co-operation with the BCFRST Foundation and BCIC. The BCFRST Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to nurturing and supporting research, and helping attract and retain faculty and graduate students, in British Columbia’s post-secondary institutions in the fields of natural resources, applied science and engineering.
“On behalf of the Board of the BCFRST Foundation I applaud the government for their vision in establishing the NRAS Endowment Fund,” said Martha Salcudean, chair of BCFRST. “As world leading researchers, the NRAS award winners announced today will propel B.C. leadership in knowledge discovery, technology development and technology deployment provincially, nationally and globally.”
Since 2001, the B.C. government has committed $1.8 billion to research in British Columbia, and leveraged over $1 billion in research funding from other sources, generating jobs, economic development and supporting research excellence throughout British Columbia.
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Media contacts:
Dale Steeves
Director of Communications
Office of the Premier
250 361-7783
Gordon Keast
Public Affairs Bureau
Ministry of Science and Universities
250 952-0132
Two Backgrounders follow.
BACKGROUNDER
The Natural Resources and Applied Sciences Endowment
The Province of British Columbia established the Natural Resources and Applied Sciences Endowment (NRAS) in 2006 to enhance the quality of life for British Columbians by building a strong research, technology transfer and commercialization environment in the fields of natural resources, applied science and engineering. The endowment has been funded by an initial investment of $50 million.
NRAS programs support some of British Columbia’s most accomplished and promising
researchers working on projects that hold potential for significant social, environmental and
economic benefit to the province both over the near term and in the future. These programs specifically focus on innovative B.C. solutions to problems while anticipating possibilities for significant leverage from the natural sciences.
NRAS Award Recipients
Farid Golnaraghi, SFU
Title: Smart Sensors for intelligent tires.
Project Summary: Developing highly advanced and self energized “smart” sensors for vehicle tires, including wireless transmission modules and micro sensors. The primary focus of application will be on embedded, wireless, self-energized sensors in tires for measuring road applied forces, tire pressure, temperature, etc.
Award Amount: $300,000
William Davidson, SFU
Title: Sex-determination in Atlantic salmon.
Project Summary: Determining the molecular basis for sex-determination in Atlantic salmon by identifying the genes involved in the sex-determining pathway.
Award Amount: $298,760
Septimiu Edmund Salcudean, UBC
Title: Development of improved ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging techniques for the prostate.
Project Summary: Improved ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging techniques have the potential to improve prostate cancer diagnosis, treatment and disease progress monitoring, reducing patient suffering and healthcare expenditures.
Award Amount: $291,330
Gregory Mori, SFU
Title: Improving pedestrian safety via automated data collection and safety analysis.
Project Summary: Real data is critical for the development of safe and effective transportation infrastructure. The development of novel computer vision algorithms will enable the automatic tracking of road users and improved analytical tools and measures for assessing road safety.
Award Amount: $298,398
Maycira Costa, UVic
Title: Fish food from space: use of satellites to aid fisheries management.
Project Summary: Dr. Costa is developing an operational method for using satellite imagery to derive a spatial temporal time series of phytoplankton blooms and associate it with fish stock data. These satellite images may become a tool to help define fish stocks in the Salish Sea, B.C.
Award Amount: $279,410
Shuo Tang, UBC
Title: Development of an optical biopsy device for skin cancer detection and evaluation.
Project Summary: The optical biopsy device will enable non-invasive, sub-surface structural imaging and biochemical composition identification similar to histology, providing real-time imaging that can potentially be used in the early cancer detection.
Award Amount: $300,000
Xiaotao Bi, UBC
Title: Wood pellets: A choice feedstock to produce second generation liquid biofuels.
Project Summary: British Columbia has become a world leader in converting waste residues from sawmills to wood pellets. UBC researchers are developing a new generation of wood pellets by steam explosion pre-treatment to make these pellets suitable for hydrolysis and conversion to ethanol, as to increase the pellet durability.
Award Amount: $300,000
Nicholas Coops, UBC
Title: Development of provincewide biodiversity indicators using Earth observation data.
Project Summary: This project will develop a framework for monitoring biodiversity change by identifying regions of unique biodiversity and ensuring these areas are well represented in the current network of parks and protected areas. Beyond developed biodiversity, these metrics will be used to predict bird species distributions and provide information for B.C. bird conservation plans.
Award Amount: $286,400
Mohamed Hefeeda, SFU
Title: Enabling high-quality mobile multimedia services.
Project Summary: The project presents novel algorithms and systems to minimize the energy consumption of mobile devices, improve user-perceived quality and maximize the use of the wireless spectrum.
Award Amount: $296,400
Donald S. Mavinic, UBC
Title: Excess nitrogen removal from wastewater using an innovative annamox process.
Project Summary: The project proposes a cost-effective, sustainable and more ecologically friendly technology for the removal of nitrogen in B.C. wastewater treatment plants with the potential to significantly reduce capital and operating costs, effluent toxicity and carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
Award Amount: $249,600
Xiaodai Dong, UVic
Title: Ultra-wideband systems for wireless sensor networks with applications to natural resources and health care sectors.
Project Summary: The proposed wireless sensor network based on ultra-wideband (UWB) technology will be used for environment monitoring and control, hospital equipment logistics, patient tracking and localization, asset tagging and management, fleet management, animal tracking, family communications and supervision of children, search and rescue and more.
Award Amount: $300,000
Mark Johnson, UBC
Title: Evaluation of the use of biochar (charcoal derived from non-timber forest biomass) as a means to increase forest productivity.
Project Summary: Nitrogen fertilizer, commonly used in forest management in coastal B.C., leads to greenhouse gas emissions including nitrous oxide and nitrate leaching into groundwater and surface water. This project will determine the potential for biochar to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate leaching, which are important considerations for improving the sustainability of forestry operations.
Award Amount: $231,400
Doug Stead, SFU
Title: Improving mine safety, economics and sustainability through implementation of geotechnical innovation in British Columbia surface mines.
Project Summary: This project will aim to improve mine safety, economics and sustainability through implementation of geotechnical innovation in British Columbia surface mines. To achieve this, B.C. surface mines will receive state-of-the-art rock slope characterization, monitoring and numerical modeling techniques.
Award Amount: $240,000
Anoush Poursartip, UBC
Title: Development of design tools to help fibreglass and composites companies reduce manufacturing risk.
Project Summary: Originally created for the aerospace composites sector, science-based manufacturing design tools are being optimized for usage in the industrial fibreglass and composites sectors, helping them to compete globally.
Award Amount: $293,700
Reuven Gordon, UVic
Title: Plasmon-enhanced quantum information processing nanotechnology.
Project Summary: This projects aims to integrate two nanotechnologies to establish a novel platform for quantum information processing, offering quick solutions for computer problems.
Award Amount: $300,000
Alexandra Fedorova, SFU
Title: Building better and faster video games with the help of parallelization.
Project Summary: Video games are a performance-hungry domain: better performance means better, more interactive and realistic video games. This project will develop tools and techniques for parallelizing video games, which will enable programmers to use familiar programming style, but let the underlying system efficiently parallelize the code across tens or hundreds of processors or GPU cores.
Award Amount: $291,544
Jian Pei, SFU
Title: Interactive searching and mining of large evolving graphs.
Project Summary: The next generation of search engines will transform data from online social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn into business opportunities. By building search engines for large-scale evolving social networks and complex graphs, this project tackles storing large evolving social networks, time-sensitive community search and multidimensional community analysis.
Award Amount: $300,000
Alireza Nojeh, UBC
Title: Development of novel, high-performance electron sources using carbon
Project Summary: Electron sources are critical components in a wide variety of industrial and scientific equipment in clean air technologies, manufacturing, medical imaging, displays and electronics. The electron sources to be developed will increase equipment productivity and longevity, thereby reducing operating costs.
Award Amount: $274,000
Kevin James Smith, UBC
Title: Novel catalysts for low-temperature methane oxidation.
Project Summary: This project will synthesize three new classes of nanomaterials to
control the emissions from the exhausts of hybrid diesel/natural gas/hydrogen
engines being developed by Westport Innovations in Vancouver. The most
promising of these new materials will be incorporated into a prototype
catalytic converter and tested in the facilities of Westport Innovations.
Award Amount: $300,000
Vincent Wai-Shuen Wong, UBC
Title: Co-operative design and resource allocation for wireless mesh networks.
Project Summary: The throughput and reliability of wireless mesh networks can be improved by developing novel co-operative relaying, orthogonal frequency division multiple access and network coding schemes. The outcome of this project will help researchers and practitioners better understand the interactions and dynamics of different components and positively impact the theory and practice of wireless mesh network design and optimization.
Award Amount: $299,100
Bozena Kaminska, SFU
Title: Multifunctional active composite materials for embedded microsystems devices.
Project Summary: A new generation of energy storage devices based on soft film
polymer material will enable low-cost, environmentally friendly powering of
electronic devices. The approach combines commercially feasible nano-structures
used to increase energy efficiency and new advanced manufacturing processes for
high volume fabrication.
Award Amount: $300,000
Boris Stoeber, UBC
Title: Mobile chemical sensor networks for effluent source location.
Project Summary: The research supported by this project focuses on the development of high-performance chemical sensing technology. The sensors will be able to detect very small amounts of chemicals in the air along with any changes in their concentration. The capabilities of this new sensing technology will benefit surveillance of industrial processes, where chemical concentrations vary over time and spatially throughout the production site.
Award Amount: $286,000
Zuomin Dong, UVic
Title: Development of design tools and key technology for next generation commercial hybrid vehicles.
Project Summary: This collaborative research will focus on the development of new design tools, key technology and control methods for advanced commercial hybrid vehicle powertrains to address the technical challenges of developing commercial hybrid vehicles with widely varying loads and drive cycles.
Award Amount: $295,800
Albert M. Leung, SFU
Title: Wireless sensor networks for video surveillance
Project Summary: This research addresses the design issues of battery-operated wireless video surveillance systems from a complete system perspective, taking into account the generation, transmissions, storage, retrieval and consumption of video information.
Award Amount: $300,000
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Media contacts:
Dale Steeves
Director of Communications
Office of the Premier
250 361-7783
Gordon Keast
Public Affairs Bureau
Ministry of Science and Universities
250 952-0132
BACKGROUNDER
MAJOR B.C. RESEARCH INVESTMENTS
B.C. Knowledge Development Fund (BCKDF)
More than $420 million invested through BCKDF in over 720 research projects throughout B.C. This includes major funding for projects such as NEPTUNE Canada, the world’s largest cabled seafloor observatory, which is making B.C. a global leader in marine research and technology, and the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre, the world’s largest, most advanced and most comprehensive facility devoted to spinal cord injury research and patient care.
Leading Edge Endowment Fund (LEEF)
Established in 2002, LEEF is part of the B.C. government’s commitment to establish permanent B.C. leadership chairs at universities across the province in health, social, environmental, economic development and technological research. The B.C. government has invested $56.25 million to create 29 permanently endowed research and innovation chairs.
Natural Resources and Applied Sciences Endowment (NRAS)
The NRAS endowment is a $50 million fund established to build research and development, advanced training, technology transfer and commercialization capacity in B.C. in engineering, natural resources and the applied sciences.
Some other major investments include:
· $274.9 million – Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research
· $152.2 million – Genome BC
· $94.5 million – Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions/Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium
· $32 million – Brain Research Centre at UBC Hospital
· $30 million – Terry Fox Research Institute
· $25 million – Centre for Drug Research and Development
· $25 million – BioEnergy Network
· $15 million – Pacific Alzheimer Research Foundation
Since 2001, the B.C. government has committed $1.8 billion to research in British Columbia, and leveraged over $1 billion in research funding from other sources, generating jobs, economic development and supporting research excellence throughout British Columbia.
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Media Contacts:
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Dale Steeves Director of Communications Office of the Premier 250 361-7783 |
Gordon Keast Public Affairs Bureau Ministry of Science and Universities 250 952-0132 |
Media Contacts:
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For more information on government services or to subscribe to the Province’s news feeds using RSS, visit the Province’s website at www.gov.bc.ca.
