Neurosciences institute selects brain star for the year

Ottawa, ON – Queen’s University graduate, Dr Jeffrey Coull, has won the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction’s Brain Star of the Year Award.

Awarded each year to a promising young researcher, the award recognizes the excellence of research conducted in Canada by graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and residents in all fields and disciplines within the institute’s mandate. Dr Coull was chosen for his work, published in Nature, which demonstrates that an imbalance of anions in spinal cord neurons may be the cause of hypersensitivity to pain, thereby setting the stage for the development of new analgesics.

“The excellence of Jeff’s research and its interdisciplinary nature has the potential to positively impact the health of many Canadians,” says Dr Rmi Quirion, the institute’s scientific director. “The investments being made by INMHA in today’s young researchers will help to put Canada at the forefront of brain research in the world.”

The Brain Star of the Year award recipient is selected from among all of the previous year’s Brain Star winners, emerging scientists currently enrolled in their studies who have published their research findings in prominent scientific journals. Brain Star awards, presented every two weeks, have gone to researchers who have contributed to the expansion of research in neurosciences, vision, hearing, pain, mental health and addiction in Canada and around the world. INMHA has presented 90 Brain Star Awards since it launched the award in April 2001.

The institute, one of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, supports research to enhance mental health, neurological health, vision, hearing, and cognitive functioning and to reduce the burden of related disorders through prevention strategies, screening, diagnosis, treatment, support systems, and palliation.