Grants support molecular imaging and photovoltaic programs

Hamilton, ON – Grants each worth $1.65-million over a six-year-term have been provided to two research teams to lead programs that will advance the skills of graduate students in two highly specialized and fast-growing fields.

The grants were made by the Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE), a program of the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

The NSERC CREATE Molecular Imaging Probes (c-MIP) program will give graduate students and post-doctoral fellows at McMaster University and the Cross Cancer Institute at the University of Alberta the opportunity to enhance their technical skills, perspective, and ability to work in multi-disciplinary research teams in medical imaging, specifically developing the next generation of imaging probes from medical isotopes.

c-MIP is led by John Valliant, associate professor at McMaster, in collaboration with the Cross Cancer Institute and numerous researchers in the departments of chemistry and chemical biology and biochemistry. Students will have the opportunity to use the world-class isotope and chemical biology production facilities, research and translation infrastructure at both centres as they develop new agents.

They will also have the opportunity to expand their knowledge and collaboration networks by working on co-op terms at the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization and the Edmonton Radiopharmaceutical Centre, and at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).

The NSERC CREATE Program in Photovoltaics will train Canada’s next generation of engineers and scientists in the most advanced concepts for the conversion of sunlight to electricity.

Led by engineering professor John Preston and working with researchers at McMaster, University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo, students will have access to some of the world’s best facilities for preparing, characterizing and testing materials and devices for solar applications. Students will be drawn from the departments of engineering physics, physics, chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science and engineering at McMaster, and the departments of electrical engineering and materials science at Waterloo and Toronto. Also participating in the program will be students from the Dofasco Centre for Engineering and Public Policy and the Xerox Centre for Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Innovation.