$115M funding to be allocated in Ontario Research Fund round

Kingston, ON – The Ontario government is in the process of announcing its latest round of research funding through the Ontario Research Fund. A total of 19 projects around the province will be supported in this round, with the government’s allocation of $115 million to be matched by 107 partners. Late last week, the first two successful projects, at Queen’s University in Kingston, were announced.

The projects are:

1) Astroparticle Physics Projects at SNOLAB: Discovering the nature of the universe
– Lead researcher: Dr Anthony J Noble
– Total project cost: $53,923,170
– Provincial funding: $17,974,390
– Key private sector partner: Vale-INCO
– Researchers from Queen’s University, in collaboration with Carleton University and Laurentian University, will create the ideal conditions to observe invisible dark matter particles (left over relics from the Big-Bang) known to make up about 25% of the mass of the universe, but which scientists know virtually nothing about. The research will take place at SNOLAB, the new international facility for astroparticle physics that is the lowest radioactivity research location ever created. In this unique ultra-clean environment 2km underground in Vale-Inco’s Creighton mine in Sudbury, it’s possible to make measurements that are impossible anywhere else in the world, and to observe the rare, but fundamental, scientific phenomena that take place only a few times a year.
2) Greenhouse Gas Emission Free and Energy Efficient Power Technology for Information Systems: Developing green technologies to power information systems
– Lead researcher: Dr Praveen Jain
– Total project cost: $16,617,243
– Provincial funding: $5,539,084
– Key private sector partners: Cistel Technology, Eion Wireless, IE Power, Nortel Networks
The goal of the project is to increase efficiency by 15-20% within the next five years and develop new commercially viable IT-specific renewable energy power systems, including wind and solar-based systems. Currently, information-processing centres (IPCs) consume large amounts of energy to run and maintain computer systems, servers and associated components. How much power is available and how it can be reliably and continuously supplied is of great interest to IPC owners and their engineers, suppliers, investors and utilities.

The ministry says the remainder of recipient projects will be announced in the next two weeks. Details on the projects funded can be viewed at the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation’s website at www.ontario.ca/innovation, as they are announced.