Fifteen University of Waterloo researchers will receive $2 million from the provincial government to advance Ontario’s knowledge-based economy.
Mike Harris, MPP for Kitchener-Conestoga, and Amy Fee, MPP for Kitchener South-Hespeler, announced 11 Early Researcher Awards (ERA) and four Ontario Research Fund-Research Infrastructure (ORF-RI) awards today. The announcement is part of a larger investment by the Province of Ontario aimed at advancing Ontario’s competitive edge.
The Ontario government awarded funds to the following Waterloo researchers and projects:
Early Researcher Awards
The Early Researcher Awards program recognizes promising new researchers with $140,000 each to build a research team.
Applied Health Sciences
Michael Barnett-Cowan (Kinesiology): Neural mechanisms of multisensory processing and aging
Arts
Allison Kelly (Psychology): Facilitating treatment seeking among post-secondary students with mental health problems: The impact of an online intervention designed to increase self-compassion and lower feelings of shame
Jessica Thompson (Fine Arts): Borderline A mobile artwork to play urban data
Engineering
Werner Dietl (Electrical and Computer Engineering and Cheriton School of Computer Science): Practical pluggable properties (P3) - Improving software reliability using gradual, inferable, and synthesizable types
Kevin Musselman (Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering): Atmospherically-printed nanoscale thickness gradients for next-generation electronics
Lan Wei (Electrical and Computer Engineering): Cryogenic CMOS technology - Enabling low-cost, compact control of large-scale quantum computers
Environment
Heather Hall (School of Environment, Enterprise and Development and the School of Planning): Remote controlled - New technologies in the mining sector and the future of work in northern Canada
Science
Paul Craig (Biology): Using biological tools to predict impacts of climate change and contaminants on aquatic health
Kazi Rajibul Islam (Physics and Astronomy): Building a trapped ion quantum simulator for studying arbitrarily connected spin models
Derek Schipper (Chemistry): Organic Chemistry solutions for intractable problems in materials and nano-science
Chris Yakymchuk (Earth and Environmental Sciences): Radioactive heat generation in the Earths crust through time and space
Ontario Research Fund – Research Infrastructure (ORF-RI) awards
The ORF-RI fund helps support infrastructure needs such as equipment and modern facilities.
Arts
Grit Liebscher (German and Slavic Studies and Cognitive Science): Social Interaction, Language and Culture Laboratory (SILC Lab) ($40,000)
Engineering
Sushanta Mitra (Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering): Infrastructure to characterize capillarity and wetting for under-liquid systems ($150,000)
Mathematics
Bin Ma (Cheriton School of Computer Science): Software for peptide identification and quantification from large mass spectrometry data using data independent acquisition ($154,327)
Science
Rodney Smith (Chemistry): Spectroelectrochemical analysis for heterogeneous electrocatalysts ($130,000)