Two Waterloo Science researchers awarded infrastructure funding for COVID research

Friday, November 6, 2020

Professor Mark Servos from the department of biology and Professor Emeritus Gary Dmitrienko from the department of chemistry have been awarded research infrastructure grants to support their COVID-19 research.

Mark Servos
Mark Servos has been awarded $314K of funding, which will be used towards his project in wastewater surveillance of SARS-Cov-2, to support the public health assessment of community infection.

The signal of viral fragments in wastewater (measured using polymerase chain reactions, PCR) can be strongly correlated to the reported positive tests or hospitalizations in the corresponding population (sewer-shed). This can be an additional tool to monitortrends in communities and inform public health actions that are not influenced by the same biases in human health testing (e.g. non-symptomatic cases, etc.).

Gary Dmitrienko
Gary Dmitrienko has been awarded $251K of funding, which will be used towards his project researching antiviral drug candidates for the treatment of COVID-19.

His project involves the design and synthesis of molecules that will indicate the presence and activity of the main protease in the SARS-CoV-2 virus through creation of an intense colour change. This will guide the design and synthesis of new drugs to treat COVID19 infections.

These projects were two of 79 total projects at 52 institutions across Canada. The Exceptional funding of almost $28 million was announced today through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s Exceptional Opportunities Fund by the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.

“Canadian researchers and scientists are helping to protect our health and safety and are key to finding our way out of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Navdeep Bains, the minister of innovation, science and industry, said in a media release.

These two projects are among the three at the University of Waterloo selected for funding.