A total of $3,613,649 worth of grants has been awarded to U of T researchers, with the bulk of it directed to Engineering. The support comes from the Strategic Projects Grants (SPG) program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). The funding was part of $43 million awarded to universities across the country.
“NSERC and Canadian industry are jointly investing in six new projects that will transform breakthrough science into practical designs and prototypes. The projects leverage deep expertise in Engineering at U of T, ranging from sustainable energy solutions to cloud computing to microfluidics,” said Ted Sargent (ECE), Vice Dean, Research. His team is also a grant recipient.
The SPG program is designed to enhance Canada’s economy, society and environment over the next 10 years. The grants encourage collaboration among academic researchers, industry and government partners in line with four target areas: Environmental Science and Technology, Information and Communications Technologies, Manufacturing and Natural Resources and Energy.
“In U of T Engineering, we are exceedingly proud of our record of partnership with industry, and with our translation of research results into new products and processes. U of T engineers unite world-leading science with its application to important practical problems that affect society, the economy and the environment. This outstanding result from NSERC’s highly competitive Strategic Grant Program is yet another testament to the calibre and the dedication of U of T Engineering researchers,” Sargent said.
Professor Paul Young (CivE), U of T’s Vice President, Research and Innovation adds “This is research that focuses directly on problems and challenges that, in one way or another, affect us all…Being able to move forward on investigation of these areas is enabled by creative investment programs like the Strategic Project Grants. We are extremely grateful to the Government of Canada and NSERC for continuing to support this program.”
The six U of T Engineering faculty and projects awarded are:
Peter Herman (ECE), Controlling femtosecond laser processing: smart fibers, catheters and lab-on-fiber concepts
Baochun Li (ECE), A cloud-assisted crowdsourcing machine-to-machine networking platform for vehicular applications
Ben B. Liang (ECE), Cloud in the air: A heterogeneous data communication framework for mobile cloud computing
Ted Sargent (ECE), Solar-driven removal of organic contaminants from water
David Sinton (MIE), Nanoparticle-CO2 foams: New methods for carbon storage and oil recovery via pore-scale microfluidics
Brent Sleep (CivE), Optimizing performance of integrated green roof photovoltaic systems
