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Premier's Research Excellence Awards Support Leading Edge Team Research at Western

October 14, 2004

Seventeen of The University of Western Ontario's best researchers have been awarded Premier's Research Excellence Awards (PREA).

The PREAs were created to help Ontario 's brightest young researchers build top-notch teams and encourage innovation at the province's universities, colleges, hospitals and research institutes. The 10-year, $127.5-million awards program includes an $85-million investment from the province, with an additional $42.5 million coming from research institutions and private-sector partners.

Each of the Western recipients will receive up to $100,000 from the Ontario government and up to $50,000 from the University. The money will help recruit top-notch graduate students and post-doctoral fellows for their research teams.

"The PREA program helps us attract and retain top faculty at Western, who in turn help us to build upon Western's strengths and impact as a top research intensive University in Canada," says Ted Hewitt, Associate Vice-President (Research & International Relations). "Increasingly, complex, leading-edge research in critical areas of importance to Ontarians and Canadians is conducted in a team environment. These awards help spur the development of these critical clusters, in research fields from business and sociology, to physics and the life sciences. We congratulate all of our PREA winners, and extend our thanks to the Government of Ontario for recognizing the critical importance of research in our province."

Sixty researchers from Western have been honoured with PREAs since their creation in 1998, the second-highest number of PREA winners at an Ontario university after the University of Toronto .

The following is a list of the most recent PREA winners at Western, including brief descriptions of their research.

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For more information, please contact Christine Roulston, Communications and Public Affairs, at (519) 661-2111 ext. 85165 or croulst@uwo.ca; or Andrew Tomingas, Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, at (416) 314-3808 or andrew.tomingas@eoi.gov.on.ca. More information on the PREA program can be found at www.ontariocanada.com/ontcan/en/rts/rts_prea.jsp.

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The University of Western Ontario's Premier's Research Excellence Award Winners

Robert Bartha, Robarts Research Institute scientist; Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, Western; Lawson Health Research Institute associate scientist
Bartha develops new magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy techniques to non-invasively study brain metabolism and identify biomarkers of disease progression. The discovery of biomarkers representing specific cellular processes like apoptosis (a series of events in a cell that leads to its death) will drive the development of new treatments for stroke, cancer and mental illness.

Frank Beier, Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, Western
Beier's lab is working on the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating cartilage biology both during normal growth of the skeleton and in skeletal diseases such as osteoarthritis. His research focuses on focal adhesion kinase, an enzyme involved in cartilage development and function.

Arthur Brown, Robarts scientist; Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, Western; Lawson associate scientist
The Brown laboratory is setting out to evaluate the therapeutic potential of bone marrow-derived stem cells in repair after spinal cord injury. The effects of bone marrow-derived stem cells on recovery from spinal cord injury will be assessed including: the extent of stem cell engraftment in the injured spinal cord; locomotor recovery; autonomic function and; regeneration of nerve tracts.

Peter Brown, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Western
Brown's research is focused on the origin, evolution and physical properties of small solar system bodies. His team will be looking at meteors and meteorites and how they interact with the Earth's atmosphere, meteorites origins and what happens after they burn off.

Lorne Campbell, Department of Psychology, Western
The focus of Campbell 's research program is to investigate how partner's evaluations of their romantic relationships impact the behaviours they use to maintain, save, or dissolve their relationships. Interest will be focused on the experience of different types of emotions, and on patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication exchanged between partners.

Peta O'Connell, Robarts scientist; Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, Western; Lawson associate scientist
O'Connell's research goals are to understand the signalling pathways that regulate the activity of dendritic cells, the unique white blood cells that instruct other cells of the immune system to make vigorous responses. She is studying how dendritic cells initiate and terminate immune responses, and their potential for therapy in immune-mediated disease.

Lina Dagnino, Department Physiology & Pharmacology, Western; Child Health Research Institute scientist
The epidermis, an organism's outer layer of the skin, is renewed with an estimated turnover time of 60 days in humans. Such a high renewal rate necessitates an abundant epidermal adult stem cell population capable of supplying new cells throughout life. Dagnino's research involves explaining the mechanisms that regulate the maintenance of epidermal stem cells and how these cells acquire specialized functions to form an efficient epidermal barrier.

Zhifeng Ding, Department of Chemistry, Western
Ding's research looks at the development and application of nanoscale tools, such as specialized microscopes to study microscopic activity in single living cells and semiconductor nanostructures.

Qingping Feng, Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, Western; Lawson scientist
Feng's research aims to understand mechanisms of heart failure and develop novel pharmacological therapies for heart failure. He is specifically interested in the role of nitric oxide in the development of heart failure.

Amit Garg, Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Western; Lawson scientist
Garg's research aims to prevent kidney failure and its complications. His research focuses include: The Walkerton Health Study, a seven-year 4,300 participant initiative characterizing and preventing kidney disease after the E.coliO157 water contamination of 2000; and multi-centre studies examining the medical, psychosocial and economic implications of becoming a living kidney donor.

Marc Joanisse, Department of Psychology, Western
Joanisse is seeking a better understanding of the nature of developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment in children. He has been developing a research program that incorporates three areas of inquiry: behavioural measures of speech, language and reading ability in impaired children; computer models of the neural bases of these disorders; and innovative neuroimaging techniques to help identify what brain regions are involved in language and literacy impairments.

Stefan Köhler, Department of Psychology, Western
The goal of Köhler's research is to understand the brain mechanisms of human memory and its disorders. He will examine how brain systems involved in memory formation contribute to our ability to detect novel aspects of our environment.

Scott Macdougall-Shackleton, Department of Psychology, Western
Macdougall-Shackleton's research examines how environmental factors such as the duration of daylight and social interactions result in changes in the brain, hormones and behaviour. This work is conducted on songbirds because they have extreme neural, physiological and behavioural changes over the course of the changing seasons.

Julie McMullin, Department of Sociology, Western
McMullin 's research examines the relationship between workforce aging and employment in new economies. It will provide an overview of the age structure of occupations and industries in Ontario to identify those that will be most affected by workforce aging, and examine the employment and retirement patterns of older workers.

Martin Müser, Departments of Applied Mathematics and Physics, Western
Muser's research involves investigating materials behaviour at very small scales. By teaching the computer the properties of individual atoms and having the computer simulate the motion of the atoms, he will tackle numerous questions related to nanotechnology.

Liana Zanette, Department of Biology, Western
Zanette is working to identify the mechanisms responsible for the global declines in songbird abundance. Through a series of large-scale, controlled field experiments, she is testing the various mechanisms hypothesized to be responsible for these declines.

Greg Zaric, Richard Ivey School of Business, Western
In Britain, several drug manufacturing companies have set up risk-sharing agreements with government on drug pricing and access. Zaric will analyze the effectiveness and impact of risk-sharing agreements between drug manufacturers and health care payers.

Original Citation Information:

Western News, October 14, 2004. http://communications.uwo.ca/media_newsroom/story.html?listing_id=15939