With an ongoing focus on research excellence at Saint Mary’s, we are proud to announce significant funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) again this year in recognition of the talent and hard work of our dedicated research faculty.
It was recently announced that nine Faculty of Science researchers at Saint Mary’s will receive funding worth more than $1.6-million over five years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for their Discovery Grants.
Their work wide-ranging topics, from collagen fibril structures 1000 times thinner than a human hair to supermassive black holes, and disparate ways we can improve our natural world, from remediating historic contamination of earth to discovering more environmentally-responsible farming practices. The common bond between these vastly different scientific fields is the pursuit of knowledge that will change the way we understand our world and the Universe.
"It is exciting to celebrate the success of our SMU Science researchers,” said Dr. Lori Francis, acting Dean of Science. “These NSERC awards reflect the high quality and impactful research taking place at Saint Mary’s. This new funding will support our researchers' innovative, ground-breaking research as well as support remarkable research opportunities for our undergraduate and graduate students.”
The Discovery Grants Program, NSERC’s largest program, supports ongoing natural sciences and engineering research projects with long-term goals. In addition to promoting and maintaining a diversified base of high-quality research at Canadian universities, Discovery Grants help provide a stimulating environment for student research training.
“The ongoing success of these science professors in securing federal funding support for their research at Saint Mary’s continues to be a reflection of the truly world-class contributions being made to both fundamental and applied science knowledge,” said Dr. Adam Sarty, Associate Vice-President, Research and Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.
“The professors who’ve received these research grants range from senior research professors, including one of our Canada Research Chairs, to early career researchers – with three of them having only joined SMU within the last two years – so we can see these research contributions, and the associated involvement of students in research, continuing solidly forward. And we highlight that four of these nine new awards are to researchers hailing from one Department, engaged in the most fundamental of science research topics: astrophysical processes governing the formation and evolution of stars, black holes, and galaxies!”
Selection for the Discovery Grants Program is based on peer review recommendations. These grants are designed to support ongoing research programs with long-term goals. Thanks to their long term, typically five years, they give researchers the flexibility to explore the most promising avenues of research as they emerge.
Congratulations to all, this research work in the Faulty of Science, and across the entire university, is exciting and inspiring. Details about the exciting work our faculty members are doing is found below.Dr. Linda Campbell, Environmental Science
Abandoned legacy gold mine sites from the 1800s to early 1900s still present severe environmental contamination issues in 64 Nova Scotia gold districts, with arsenic and mercury levels frequently exceeding environmental guidelines in soil, sediment, surface water and groundwater in all districts. Since the historical gold ore extraction process required vast amounts of fresh water, most, if not all, legacy gold mine ore processing and tailing sites are situated close to (or are within) wetlands. Risks as contaminants transfer up food webs include decreased functionality, negative economic impacts, and potential ecosystem and human health hazards.
Recently Dr. Campbell and her team completed major surveys of freshwater areas impacted legacy gold mine tailing sites, with promising results for improved survivability of invertebrates and lower concentrations of arsenic and mercury in the overlying water. The next step is to test and refine application formulations to better mimic environmental conditions found in legacy gold tailing wetlands, with a long-term objective to finalize the reactive capping formulation and confirm the feasibility for use in contaminated wetlands.
Dr. David Chiasson, Biology
Improving symbiotic performance for enhanced plant nutrition
A central goal of sustainable agricultural practice is to provide nutritious food and plant products while minimizing the impact on the environment. Legume plants are a key component of sustainable agriculture since they form a symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria (rhizobia), reducing our reliance upon applied nitrogen fertilizers. The production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers consumes vast quantities of fossil fuels and their application leads to negative environmental outcomes such as greenhouse gas emissions and water contamination.
The long-term goal of my program is to understand the molecular, biochemical, and genetic mechanisms that underlie the legume-rhizobial symbiosis, providing the knowledge base for strategies aimed at improving the value of legume plants in agriculture. Collectively, the multi-disciplinary research program will address key unresolved questions in the field of legume research and provide advanced training opportunities for the next generation of scientists. As the demand for plant protein is steadily increasing, legumes are positioned to fulfill the need due to their protein-rich seeds and environmental advantages. This pivotal research is both timely and essential as we move towards a future of more environmentally-responsible farming practices in Canada.
Dr. Greg Christian, Astronomy and Physics
Direct and Indirect Measurements of Astrophysical Capture Reactions
The vast majority of the elements making up the world around us were formed through sequences of nuclear reactions and decays occurring in stars. These nuclear processes are responsible for energy generation in quiescent stellar burning, as well as stellar explosions such as novae, supernovae, and X-ray bursts. At the same time, these reaction/decay chains transmutate the initial “seed” elements (hydrogen and helium, formed in the Big Bang) into heavier species - eventually filling nearly the entire periodic table.
The overarching goal of this research project is to better understand the rates of key reactions which have a significant impact on nucleosynthesis and/or energy generation in stellar burning and stellar explosions. The rates of key reactions - which have been identified in sensitivity studies involving computer simulations of stellar processes - will be studied through direct and indirect measurements using stable and rare-isotope beams from the TRIUMF/ISAC accelerator facility.
Dr. Luigi Gallo, Astronomy and Physics
The Ins and Outs of Black Hole Accretion
A supermassive black hole that is millions or even billions of times more massive than the Sun resides at the centres of most galaxies. Some of these monsters are so active that they can make the surrounding material shine brighter than all the stars in its host galaxy. The material closest to the black hole, just as it is about to plunge beyond the point of no return, is so hot it radiates X-rays and it is subjected to the most violent conditions in the Universe. The extreme gravity of the black hole can tear stars apart and fling matter around at velocities close to the speed of light before it is finally ingested. Sometimes this material can be hurled so violently that it is completely ejected from the black hole region and deposited into the galactic neighbourhood where it may have a resounding effect on the conditions in the host galaxy.
Observing these active galaxies with space-based X-ray observatories may be the only way to study the exotic physics at work in the black hole environment. What does the environment look like? How is material falling into the black hole and what is it made of? How does material near a black hole get ejected from the system? How does this ejecta influence the host galaxy that the black hole resides in? These are only a few questions that my team will be tackling over the course of this work to try understanding how black holes grow and galaxies evolve.
Dr. Vincent Hénault-Brunet, Astronomy and Physics
Dynamically probing the dark side of globular clusters: from central black holes to the Milky Way halo
Dr. Hénault-Brunet’s research examines the dynamics of globular clusters, extremely compact and old collections of up to a million stars found in the outer parts of galaxies. By combining dynamical models, statistical techniques, and detailed observations of the motions of stars in these systems, he will investigate how they are affected (through gravity) by the presence of otherwise invisible mass, such as black holes and other stellar remnants in cluster cores or dark matter in our Milky Way galaxy. Shining light on the dark side of globular clusters will not only lead to a better understanding of their composition, origin and evolution, but it will also provide much needed information on the formation of black holes in dense stellar environments.
Dr. Stavros Konstantinidis
Representational, Algorithmic and Applied Aspects of Word Relations
In many areas of Computing Science, entities of interest are represented in the form of strings of characters or digits, and a relation among n entities is represented as a set of n-string tuples. Such a relation is called an n-ary relation. Computation theory provides (i) methods to represent a possibly infinite word relation as a finite object (ii) algorithms that operate on these finite objects (iii) methods to establish whether algorithmic questions on these objects are hard or even undecidable. Motivated by applications of n-ary relations in program security, graph databases and bioinformatics, the proposed research will investgate representation of rational relations as n-ary regular expressions as well as the intersection problem of rational relations (intersecting two rational relations does not always result into a rational relation). Moreover, approximation and randomized algorithms for hard questions on rational relations will be investigated. Unlike ordinary regular expressions, the area of n-ary regular expressions has not been invesigated thoroughly in the past. The proposed research will establish new technical tools on n-ary relations that will enrich our body of knowledge on the topic and will provide opportunities for high quality training of HQP.
Dr. Jason Masuda, Chemistry
Stabilization of Unique Chemical Bonding Environments and Exploration of Small Molecule Reactivity
Work in the research group lead by Dr. Masuda is focussed on the preparation of new functional groups specific groups. Functional groups are arrangements of atoms within molecules that have characteristic properties, such as aldehydes, ketones, and alcohols. Chemists have a general understanding of how normal functional groups react. In the Masuda group, new arrangements of atoms are targeted and once isolated, the physical properties are studied as well as how they react with other molecules. Most importantly, student researchers in the Masuda Group learn transferrable skills, such as critical thinking and organizational skills, that will assist them as they move on in their careers.
Dr. Marcin Sawicki, Astronomy and Physics
Exploring Cosmic Noon and Cosmic Dawn with JWST Guaranteed Time Observations
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021 will transform the understanding of the distant Universe. Since 2003, Dr. Sawicki, a core and founding member of the JWST Near-IR Imager and Slitless Spectrograph team, has been anticipating this launch, and plans to use 200 hours of his team’s allocation to carry out a dedicated program to study the evolution of low-mass galaxies across cosmic time. At nearly half of Canada’s Guaranteed Time Observer time, these data will represent a once-in-a-career opportunity for the group. This work will focus on the evolution and role of low-mass galaxies, which are the most numerous galaxies in the Universe. The primary goal of this program is to understand their properties, impact, and evolution over cosmic time.
During the term of the grant, the team will also finish a ongoing key projects that use the massive CLAUDS+HSC imaging dataset that probe the distant universe to an unprecedented combination of depth and area, and will then publicly release this fantastic dataset to the community.
Dr. Sam Veres, Engineering
Development, control, and functional significance of variations in collagen fibril nanostructure, with application to the creation of novel biomaterials
Arguably the most important structural protein to both humans and animals, collagen fibrils fulfill the tensile load-bearing requirements of tissues such as bone, tendon, ligament, and cartilage. Due to their critical role in our normal function, collagen fibrils have been the subject of ongoing research for the past six decades. Fibrils typically have diameters ranging from 50 to 250 nm, about 1000 times thinner than a human hair. Being of similar scale to the wavelength of visible light, the structural details of collagen fibrils can’t be visualized with normal light microscopy, requiring techniques like electron or atomic force microscopy.
Using a wide array of nanoscale structural characterization techniques, and mechanical, thermal, and enzymatic degradability testing of individual collagen fibrils, questions regarding when, how, and why the collagen fibril structures of functionally distinct tendons diverge during development will be explored. The research program could offer significant improvements to those materials currently used for bone tissue repair in orthopaedic surgery and the technologies created will ideally lead to commercial product developments here in Canada.