By Tamarah Feder
McGill University’s standing as a leading institution for post-doctoral research was reinforced today as the Canadian government announced the first 70 recipients of the Banting Fellowships. More fellowships were awarded to McGill than any other institution in the country. The fellowships provide elite postdoctoral researchers from Canada and around the world with $70,000 per year for two years in support of their research.
This year’s nine McGill-based fellows hail from Canada, France, the United States, Benin and Australia. Their research is focused on a broad range of areas in health, natural sciences and engineering, and social sciences, including the relationship between gas flow and galaxy evolution, legal access to water, war and ethics in the age of robotics, the effects on memory and emotions on children with sleep disorders, and what tadpoles can tell us about human vision.
“The awarding of these Banting Fellowships to McGill researchers is an affirmation of the value of their cutting-edge research. It also highlights the resources and support available to these exceptional post-doctoral students from here and abroad who have made the decision to pursue their research in Canada and at McGill,” said Principal Heather Munroe-Blum.
Aurélie Cobat, a native of France who studies in the Faculty of Medicine, is researching tuberculosis infection. “My postdoctoral work will identify an entirely new set of targets for clinical and public health interventions that can have an enormous impact for one of the most pressing global health problems,” she said. “The Fellowship gives me a unique opportunity to complete my development in the human genetics of infectious disease at the McGill Centre for the Study of Host Resistance. In this unique setting, I will be able to improve my understanding of methodological and functional aspects of the genetic control of infectious diseases.”
The Fellowship is named in memory of Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian physician, researcher, Nobel laureate and war hero who, with his assistant Dr. Charles Best, is credited with the discovery of insulin. Funding for the awards is delivered through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Meet Mcgill’s 2011 Banting Fellows:
Aurélie Cobat (Faculty of Medicine); Cory Harris Canada (McGill School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition); Jim Geach (Department of Physics); Marion Van Horn (Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery); Jessica Coon (Department of Linguistics); Jean-Baptiste Jeangène-Vilmer (Faculty of Law, Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism); Armel Brice Adanhounme (Faculty of Law); Melodee Mograss (McGill University Health Centre); and Mark Lewis Shepheard (Faculty of Law.)
To learn more about the new Fellows and their research, please visit: http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2011/09/meet-mcgill%E2%80%99s-2011-banting-fellows/