On September 23, 2009, Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology), announced that 19 McGill researchers were among the 181 newly appointed or renewed Canada Research Chairs. McGill received nine Tier 1 and 10 Tier 2 Chairs worth a total of $17,600,000. “Canada’s government is investing in science and technology to strengthen the economy, improve Canadians’ quality of life and create the jobs of tomorrow—today,” said Minister Goodyear. “The Canada Research Chairs program helps attract and retain the best researchers from the country and around the world to Canadian universities, which has direct benefits for our communities.”
McGill’s new CRCs are:
■ Marco Amabili, vibrations and new fluid-structure interaction (Tier 1)
■ Catherine M. Bushnell, clinical pain research (Tier 1)
■ Brian E. Chen, neural circuit formation (Tier 2)
■ Allan R. Greer, colonial North America (Tier 1)
■ Tommy J. Nilsson, proteomics and systems medicine (Tier 1)
■ Seok-Woo Son, global climate variability (Tier 2)
■ Michael Wagner, speech and language processing (Tier 2)
McGill’s twelve renewed chairs are:
■ Jake E. Barralet, osteoinductive biomaterials (Tier 2)
■ Albert M. Berghuis, structural biology (Tier 1)
■ Aashish Clerk, theoretical mesoscopic physics (Tier 2)
■ Russell Davidson, economics (Tier 1)
■ Eliot Fried, interfacial and defect mechanics (Tier 1)
■ Andrew Gonzalez, biodiversity (Tier 2)
■ Desmond R. A. Manderson, law and discourse (Tier 1)
■ Alexei Miasnikov, algebra (Tier 1)
■ Jay Louise Nadeau, nanocellular neuroscience (Tier 2)
■ Ciriaco A. Piccirillo, regulatory lymphocytes of the immune system (Tier 2)
■ Phillip D. Servio, gas hydrates (Tier 2)
■ Jason C. Young, molecular chaperones (Tier 2)
Additionally, the Canada Foundation for Innovation is investing more than $750,000 to fund research infrastructure essential to the work done by Amabili, Fried, Nilsson, Servio, Son and Wagner.
“McGill is very grateful to the Canada Research Chairs program for this important funding,” said Denis Thérien, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) at McGill University. “We are attracting top talent to our University through the program, bringing in a generation of researchers who are advancing discovery and innovation in exciting new directions.”
The Government of Canada created the Canada Research Chairs program in 2000 with the aim of making Canada one of the worldʼs top five countries for research and development. McGill has used the program to recruit exceptional international researchers and to repatriate outstanding Canadian and Quebec researchers.