Researchers awarded $19 million

Monday, June 2, 2003
University of Alberta ExpressNews
Stephen Osadetz

University of Alberta researchers were awarded $18.7 million in funding in the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada's (NSERC) new round of grants announced on Monday.

The funding for the 156 researchers will be distributed over the next five years and will support a variety of basic research, from the study of how pigs metabolize their food to the most cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence.

"This funding is absolutely essential to the research that we do in the natural sciences and engineering at the U of A, and our success in this competition is a reflection of the high-caliber of researchers that we have in these areas of research, and it's a tribute to their imagination," said Dr. Bill McBlain, a U of A Associate Vice President of Research.

Dr. David Bundle, a professor of chemistry, received a one of the largest funding allotments. He'll use the grant to engineer small sugar molecules that could bind to proteins more securely than average carbohydrate molecules do. His research could lead to the development of a drug that would block toxins, such as those produced by E. coli, from entering human cells. If this works, it could provide an effective treatment for the kind of infection that was responsible for the deaths of seven people and the sickness of thousands in Walkerton, Ontario in 2000. Improving the way that carbohydrates bind to proteins could have other implications as well, with possible applications in cancer and Alzheimer's treatment.

"NSERC funding is the academic yardstick that you're measured by," Bundle said. "The really important thing about these grants is that you have total freedom to redesign your objectives. You could spend your money on whatever aspect of the projects you wish, and you could even choose a totally different application of the money."

The U of A Department of Chemistry cleaned up in the awards this year, with a number of its members receiving large grants. In addition to Bundle, another chemist who did very well was Dr. Rod Wasylishen. His work focuses on a method of studying the structure and dynamics of molecules called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Specifically, he studies solid-state NMR, a new field that is developing to use NMR to study solids.

The chemistry department here "is one of the best departments in the country, and that's why I came here, in part," Wasylishen said. "There aren't many places you would find people more active in research."

In sum, the NSERC funding will inject 2,752 research grants worth $325 million over five years into 67 Canadian post-secondary institutions across the country.

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