As students gradually come back to campus and life returns to some normalcy, research continues to thrive at the Faculty of Science. The benefits of the research conducted in our faculty will be felt in our daily lives, our health and our environment. Thus, research by Professors Jeff Lundeen and Robert Boyd, from the Physics department, led to the development of the "spaceplate", a radical new way to make your camera super-thin. Research by the group of Professor Derek Pratt, from the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, furthers our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying disease. Recent studies by the laboratory of Professor Clément Bataille, from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, improved our ability to detect the spruce budworm, a pest insect that defoliates our boreal forest. These are only a few of the achievements from our researchers in the last year that are featured in this report.
Success of researchers in highly competitive funding programs continues and is accompanied by prestigious national and international prizes. Professor Paul Corkum, from the Department of Physics, obtained the Wolf prize in Physics, the highest honour after the Nobel Prize. Professor Jan Mennigen, from the Department of Biology, earned the Gorbman-Bern New Independent Investigator Award for his work on glucose intolerance in the rainbow trout, studies that have important ecological and economical implications in the context of aquaculture. Our researchers interact with the private sector in innovative projects such as one to establish the genetic basis of preferences when it comes to coffee drinking, a study undertaken collaboratively between Beverage Genetics and the Faculty of Science Core Molecular Biology and Genomics Laboratory. I hope you will share our excitement about these achievements and the numerous others featured in this report.
- Marc Ekker, Vice-Dean, Research and Infrastructure
