uOttawa News

OTTAWA, March 13, 2012  —  The University of Ottawa hosted the Honourable Gary Goodyear, minister of state (science and technology), as part of a national funding announcement for the Canada Research Chairs program, through which the University of Ottawa recruits the best and brightest minds in the world and helps position itself as one of the country’s top research-intensive institutions.

A federal investment of 124.5 million dollars, which includes 6,3 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, will be shared between 132 Canada Research Chairs across Canada, including five renewals at the University of Ottawa whose work is leading to ground-breaking discoveries in Parkinson's disease , computational nanophotonics, globalization and health equity, human genome epidemiology and proteomics and systems biology.

“The Government of Canada is committed to investing in research programs that continue to have a positive effect on Canada’s economy and that touch the lives of Canadians,” said Minister Goodyear. “Our government is staying focused on what matters – creating jobs and economic growth. By supporting innovation, we are not only encouraging cutting-edge research, but also helping bring promising ideas to the marketplace to keep our economy strong in the future.”

“We are grateful that the Government of Canada invests massively each year in this program, which plays a key role in both research and innovation and for training the next generation of scientists,” said Mona Nemer, uOttawa vice-president, research.

As one of Canada’s top ten research institutions, the University of Ottawa has gained significant momentum in the quality and quantity of research it carries out. Exemplary researchers who raise the bar in their fields—including Paul Corkum, who has helped position our institution among the very best photonics research centres in the world; Lori Beaman, a leading scholar in religious diversity and freedom; Tracy Vaillancourt, a renowned expert in children’s mental health and violence prevention; and Michael Geist, one of the leading copyright scholars in the world—are among the hundreds of specialists at the University of Ottawa whose scientific work benefits not only policy-makers, businesses, other researchers and practitioners, but also individual Canadians throughout the country.