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Ontario government announces $4.6 million investment to equip researchers
August 8, 2012
from McMaster Daily News
The Province of Ontario has announced an investment of nearly $5 million to support researchers at McMaster.
“We are proud of the exceptional work happening in Hamilton,” said Ted McMeekin, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, who made the announcement during a visitto McMaster’s campus, which is part of his riding of Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale. “The contributions of our researchers are making the world a better place, starting right here with new ideas and jobs in our community.”
“Ontario’s economic growth starts with investing in talent and ideas,” said Brad Duguid, Minister of Economic Development and Innovation. “We’re proud to be partnering with the talented researchers at McMaster who are doing cutting-edge work that could lead to exciting discoveries and create new jobs and economic growth.”
McMaster president and vice-chancellor Patrick Deane said the investment will further enhance the University’s vibrant research environment.
“Many of the researchers awarded funding will now be able to upgrade and augment their current facilities with the latest equipment, while other researchers will be creating new laboratories and developing novel technologies on our campus,” Deane said. “This will ultimately increase our research capacity, accelerate our research results and provide an enriched research-training environment for our students."
Recipients include:
- Ali Emadi, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Hybrid Powertrain, was awarded $799,157 for a High-Performance Adaptable Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicle Powertrain Dynamometer Facility. The infrastructure funding will purchase a Three Dynamometer System comprised of: a powerful modeling software package, an integrated multi-function inverter that can be used for driving electric propulsion motors, and a battery simulator. This facility will be housed in the 15,000 square ft. area that is part of the new McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC), located at the McMaster Innovation Park. This advanced flexible test platform is capable of testing various powertrain configurations of different electric, hybrid electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. This new facility will make a leading contribution to the development of the next generation of electrified powertrains, and – in collaboration with the automotive industry and researchers in Canada – will help Canada become a world leader in the sector.
- The interdisciplinary project In Situ Characterization of Electrochemical Processes in Lithium Ion Batteries represents a collaboration between project leader Gillian Goward, associate professor, chemistry and chemical biology, and Gianluigi Botton, Canada Research Chair in Electron Microscopy of Nanoscale Materials, garnering $380,650 for research infrastructure. The project will combine their respective research strengths in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and advanced microscopy to solve the problem of how to develop more stable and longer life batteries for hybrid vehicles. The new lab equipment requested for this project will complement existing facilities and provide them with the ability to measure properties of lithium ion cells in real time – a game changing goal for achieving the performance targets required of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles.
- Characterization and Testing of Smart Hydrogel Materials for Biomedicine, a project led by assistant professor Todd Hoare, department of chemical engineering, will tackle the problem of getting the right amount of a drug – whether it’s to treat or cure a disease – to the right place in the body, at the right time. 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. Hoare works with “smart materials” on the macro-micro-and nanoscale and requires equipment that measures the size, charge and shape of bulk hydrogels, microparticle hydrogels (microgels) and nanoparticles hydrogels (nanogels).
- The $400,000 awarded to the Laboratory Support for Model Driven Engineering of Software for Automotive Applications, will establish a first of its kind research lab (SoftAuto Lab), in the new McMaster Automotive Resource Centre, located at the McMaster Innovation Park. The SoftAuto Lab builds on McMaster’s reputation as a world leader in software certification. Perhaps the most important aspect of 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,” explains project leader Mark Lawford, associate professor of computing and software. Lawford will be joined on the project by his department of computing and software colleagues Tom Maibaum, Canada Research Chair in Software Engineering and Alan Wassyng, Director, McMaster Centre for Software Certification (McSCert).
The investment by the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, through its Ontario Research Fund Research Infrastructure Program, will support 14 projects, representing a range of disciplines. View all »
