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CFI funding to equip cutting-edge labs
September 7, 2011
excerpt from McMaster Daily News
Designing automotive software that can predict and prevent failures before they happen and engineering drugs with the ability to get the right dosage - two of five McMaster projects earmarked for funding by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
Five labs from across campus will be taking delivery of new equipment, thanks to the CFI's Leaders Opportunity Fund - a program which invests in state-of-the-art facilities and equipment to attract and retain today's best research talent.
"This investment will help create the partnerships that will continue building McMaster's research capacity in areas such as healthcare, the automotive industry, infectious diseases and the environment," said Mo Elbestawi, vice-president research and international affairs. "The vision behind these pioneering research projects illustrate why McMaster is one of Canada's premier research Universities."
Perhaps the most important aspect of one of the projects, the new SoftAuto Lab, is that Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) ranging from undergraduate interns to research engineers and technicians will have access to state-of-the-art model-driven development tools in current use in industry.
"The SoftAuto Lab will help HQP envision where automotive electronics might be a decade from now. This will allow them to not only ask 'what if' questions, but to actually try out their ideas," said project leader Mark Lawford, associate professor of computing and software.
The SoftAuto Lab will build on McMaster's reputation as a world leader in software certification.
IBM's Don Aldridge, industry executive, research notes that the amount of software - in the order of 100 million lines of code - in today's automobiles necessitates certification that the software will actually work in every possible situation.
"McMaster is leading the effort to address this, not only for automobiles,
but for all areas where computer technology intersects with mechanical
systems - and that's a huge task. The work at McMaster is 100 per cent
consistent with IBM's efforts to create a "smarter planet" and
we're excited to be working with the world-class team at McMaster," said
Aldridge.
Mike Wallace, Member of Parliament for Burlington, commended McMaster on the funding it was awarded and said "McMaster University is playing a key role in Canada's science and technology strategy. The five projects awarded funding by the Canada Foundation for Innovation exemplify the kind of research in innovation that will create high quality jobs and allow Canada to compete globally."
The second engineering project, entitled Characterization and Testing of Smart Hydrogel Materials for Biomedicine, is led by Assistant Professor Todd Hoare, Department of Chemical Engineering. The $119,611 award is for equipment to develop "smart" drug delivery devices that will provide for dynamically-changing drug release according to patient needs.
"CFI investments provide vital infrastructure in communities across the country and create opportunities for leveraging the work being undertaken by our enterprising researchers," said Dr. Gilles G. Patry, CFI President and CEO. "Cutting-edge research facilities are magnets that attract the best talent from around the world, allowing them to work with business and train a new generation of Canadian researchers and innovators."
