Research Prominence

Sharing ideas worth spreading

Thursday March 26, 2015

By Andrew Stokes, Communications Officer

With nothing but a few slides to back them up, 15 members of the Queen’s community will take to the stage this Sunday to share some ideas worth spreading. These presenters are taking part in the fifth annual TEDxQueensU conference, an event dedicated to talks about technology, entertainment and design.

Last year's TEDx conference featured a talk by Rachel Wayne, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. (Photo Supplied)

“This is a community event that builds a platform for people to share ideas, create and innovate together,” says Tom Edgerton (Artsci’15), Director of TEDxQueensU. “It’s a great chance to highlight Queen’s and Kingston’s talent, and there’s a lot of real-time collaboration that happens here.”

Mr. Edgerton, who’s been involved with TEDx since his first year of study, says this year’s conference is set to be the biggest and best one yet. While there have been TEDx conferences happening at Queen’s for five years now, the event has undergone massive growth this year, nearly quadrupling in size. Held for the first time in the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, the event is still dedicated to encouraging curiosity, inspiring the exchange of ideas and celebrating dynamic thinking.

The event is comprised of brief talks, usually between 15 and 20 minutes, delivered by students, faculty, staff, alumni and other members of the Queen’s community. The talks are followed by opportunities for the audience to meet and speak with one another as well as the presenters.

To better reach those who aren’t able to make it to campus, the conference will also be live-streamed through the TEDxQueensU website.

“This is a student event, but this is also one of the greatest vehicles we have to show campus, our school and the research and innovation happening here to people around the world,” says Mr. Edgerton.

The speakers at this year’s event come from a diverse array of backgrounds that includes people like Afraj Gill (Comm’15) and Beverly Thomson. Mr. Gill is a technology entrepreneur who’s co-founded two tech companies and written for the Globe and Mail and Business Insider, while Ms. Thomson is a broadcast journalist, philanthropist, and co-host of Canada AM, CTV’s national morning news show.

“It doesn’t matter who you are,” says Mr. Edgerton. “If you have an idea worth spreading, we want you on the stage to share it with us, why we should care and how it will work.”

TEDxQueensU will be held on SundayMarch 29 at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.

More information and a schedule of the day’s events can be found on their website.

Tickets can be purchased through an online vendor.

Tags: Arts and Culture|Campus Community|Research Prominence|Student Learning Experience

International student wins Three Minute Thesis

Wednesday March 25, 2015

By Andrew Carroll, Gazette Editor

Chenman Yin is the winner of the Three Minute Thesis competition for Queen's University. She will now represent Queen's at the provincial final at Western on April 23.
Nicolle Domnik's presentation on her cardiopulminary system research earned her the Runner-Up Award in the Three Minute Thesis.
Changhai Zhu's research on bass populations in Lake Ontario earned him the People's Choie Award at the Three Minute Thesis.
Kevser Aktas makes her presentation on "The Impact of Powerful Numbers" during Tuesday's Three Minute Thesis final at Quen's University.
Amy Rentz's presentation at the Three Minute Thesis final focussed on her research on improving the durability of geosynthetics used in landfills.
The judges panel was comprised of, from left, Principal Daniel Woolf, journalist Ann Lukits, Toby Abramsky of Keystone Property Managment and Ken Stevens of DuPont.

Distilling years of research into a three-minute presentation is challenging enough, but doing it in your second language is a monumental task.

That’s what Chenman Yin did as she claimed the Queen’s University title for the Three Minute Thesis on Tuesday.

Ms. Yin, who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Engineering and Applied Physics, is an international student from China who also completed her undergraduate studies at Queen’s.

Her presentation – a three-minute talk and a single static slide – on using lasers to cut bone during brain surgery, earned her the top prize of $1,000 and the chance to compete at the provincials. She competed against nine other finalists who spoke on a wide array of topics, from powerful numbers in mathematics and using geosynthetics in landfills to protecting traditional knowledge and whether or not allergies develop before birth.

The event is a mix of in-depth research, engagement and humour, with the goal of helping the audience understand the findings.

The win was a bit of a surprise for Ms. Yin who entered the contest at the last minute and, being an international student, wasn’t confident in her presentation skills. She credits her friends for pushing her to enter the contest in the first place.

“As an international student, where English is not my first language, there is always pressure when speaking in front of a big crowd. I think I needed that push to do something like this. I wouldn’t voluntarily do it,” she says.

She also points out that taking part in the event will help her as she works on her thesis, providing focus as well as giving her confidence in her presentation abilities. She also just loves what she is doing and wants others to know about it.

“I think this is a great opportunity to think about what you did over the past two years, in three minutes. I personally think that my project is cool so I really want to tell people about it,” she says. “A lot of people get scared when they hear the word physics but for me it isn’t (scary), so I guess I try to use everyday language to show people why physics is neat and they actually can do something to help people live a better life.”

Nicolle Domnik, who is pursuing a PhD in physiology, claimed the runner-up prize and $500 for her presentation on her research on the cardiopulmonary system, while Changhai Zhu, a Master’s student in biology, picked up the People’s Choice Award for his work in using fishing competitions to monitor bass populations in Lake Ontario.

Ms. Yin will represent Queen’s at the Ontario University Three Minute Thesis Competition set for April 23 at Western University.

For further information on the Three Minute Thesis, go to queensu.ca/3mt/.

Tags: Campus Community|Research Prominence|Student Learning Experience

Policy series celebrates inaugural director's legacy

Wednesday March 25, 2015

By Mark Kerr, Senior Communications Officer

As the inaugural director of Queen’s School of Policy Studies (SPS), Tom Courchene strived to bring together the academic and professional policy communities through the school’s programs, conferences and lectures.

Queen's School of Policy Studies has developed a speakers series to honour Tom Courchene, the school's inaugural director and a distinguished member of the Canadian public policy community.

SPS has recognized the former director’s enduring legacy by establishing the Tom Courchene Distinguished Speakers Series. The Hon. Justice Murray Sinclair, commissioner and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), will give the first lecture in the series this Friday at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.

The speaker series is supported by the Margie and Tom Courchene Endowment Fund. It was established in 1999 with an initial gift by the Courchenes. Since that time, generous donations from Dr. Courchene’s colleagues at Queen’s and across the country have supplemented the fund.

“This speaker series will provide our students, and the Queen’s community more broadly, with a bridge between academics and policy-makers,” says Kim Nossal, Director, Queen’s School of Policy Studies. “This series will encourage an on-going discussion on critical issues, in particular Indigenous policy and governance, a policy field Tom has been increasingly engaged with in recent years.”

The Tom Courchene Distinguished Speakers Series
“What do we do about the legacy of Indian Residential Schools?”
The Hon. Justice Murray Sinclair, Commissioner and Chair, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Friday, March 27, 11:45-1:15 pm, Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts (390 King St. West) Transportation available More information

Dr. Courchene came to Queen’s in 1988 as the Stauffer-Dunning Chair in Public Policy and the first director of the new School of Policy Studies. From 1991 until his retirement in 2012, he held the Jarislowsky-Deutsch Professorship in Economics and Financial Policy at Queen’s, where he was a member of the Department of Economics, the School of Policy Studies and the Faculty of Law.

Dr. Courchene has written more than 300 articles and authored or edited 60 books. The recipient of many awards and accolades, Dr. Courchene is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Justice Sinclair was Manitoba’s first Aboriginal judge and the second Aboriginal judge in Canada. He has received numerous honours for his work in the field of Aboriginal justice. Justice Sinclair chairs the TRC, which was established in 2007 with a mandate to inform all Canadians about the 150-year history residential schools, and guide and inspire a process of reconciliation and renewed relationships based on mutual understanding and respect.

Tags: Arts and Science|Business|Campus Community|Research Prominence

Testimony on the Hill

Tuesday March 24, 2015

By Rosie Hales, Communications Officer

Queen’s professor Christian Leuprecht testified yesterday on two different bills before Parliament.

Dr. Leuprecht spoke to the Senate of Canada’s Standing Committee on National Security and Defence about Bill-C44 and later that day to the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on National Security about Bill C-51. He is one of just 48 witnesses who have been called to testify on Bill C-51.

“As an academic, I was honoured to be called to testify at both a Senate and a House Committee on the same day, and on bills as controversial as these,” says Dr. Leuprecht, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Political Studies and School of Policy Studies.

Bill C-44 is an act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act to give greater protection to CSIS human sources and to more effectively investigate threats to the security of Canada. Bill C-51, an anti-terrorism bill, would authorize government institutions to share information that could undermine the security of Canada and amend the Criminal Code with respect to terrorist activity or a terrorism offence.

As an academic, I was honoured to be called to testify at both a Senate and a House Committee on the same day, and on bills as controversial as these.
- Dr. Christian Leuprecht

“In general, I’m sympathetic to the strategy and the ends of both bills and so I expressed support for the broad rationale and the gaps they fill,” says Dr. Leuprecht. “I stressed the way Bill C-51 actually makes good on Canada’s obligations under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1373, 1624, and 2195 on preventing radicalization leading to politically motivated violent extremism, prohibiting incitement of terrorist violence and recruitment for such purposes, disrupting financial support for terrorism and foreign terrorist fighters, interdicting travel by foreign terrorist fighters. I also made concrete proposals to make the review process of intelligence activities more robust and effective.”

First, in regards to both Bill C-44 and Bill C-51, Dr. Leuprecht proposed that the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) be able to follow CSIS intelligence throughout federal agencies to ensure that intelligence is handled in accordance with the law and the Constitution. Second, he pointed out that CSIS is already the most reviewed security intelligence service in the world but suggested enhancing SIRC’s effectiveness by adopting the UK model of a separate parliamentary committee composed of select Members of Parliament, including the opposition, who have been security-cleared to be briefed by SIRC as well as the Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

Dr. Leuprecht recently laid out his position in two editorials published in the Globe and Mail: “Will Bill C-51 protect or imperil Canadians?” And “Done right, C-51 can balance freedom and security.”

Follow these links to hear Dr. Leuprecht’s testimony on Bill C-44 and Bill C-51.

As well as being a professor at Queen’s, Dr. Leuprecht is a Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy and the Institute for Intergovernmental Relations. Dr. Leuprecht is also the associate dean at the Faculty of Arts at the Royal Military College of Canada and a professor in the Department of Political Science.

Tags: Arts and Science|Research Prominence

A cancer research breakthrough

Tuesday March 24, 2015

By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

Queen’s University cancer researcher Madhuri Koti has discovered a biomarker that will help lead to better predictions of the success of chemotherapy in ovarian cancer patients. This discovery could lead to better treatment options in the fight against ovarian cancer.

Biomarkers are an indicator of a biological state or condition.

Queen's researcher Madhuri Koti recently made a breakthrough in cancer research.

“Recent successes in harnessing the immune system to combat cancer are evidence for the significant roles of a cancer patient’s immune responses in fighting cancer,” explains Dr. Koti (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences). “Many of these success are based on boosting anti-cancer immunity via different therapies. Such therapies would prove to be most effective when coupled with markers predicting a patient’s eventual response to a specific therapy.”

Dr. Koti conducted the study in retrospective cohorts of over 200 ovarian cancer patients.

The study utilized a combination of recent cutting-edge and more established detection technologies for identifying such markers. Initial discovery of these markers was made in frozen tumor tissues accrued from tumor banks such as the Ontario Tumor Bank and the Ottawa Health Research Institute and Gynecology-Oncology and Pathology services of the CHUMHospital Notre-Dame, Montreal.

Phase II validations are currently under way in retrospective cohorts of over 500 ovarian cancer patient tumors accrued from the Terry Fox Research Institute-Ovarian Cancer Canada partnered, Canadian Ovarian Experimental Unified Resource.

A major impact of this discovery is that these novel markers, when used at the time of treatment initiation in the specific type of ovarian cancer patient, will help gynecologic oncologists make decisions on additional treatment needed in these patients, thus increasing the potential for patient survival.

Ovarian cancer leads to approximately 152,000 deaths among women worldwide each year, making it a leading cause of gynecological cancer related deaths in women.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Anne-Marie Mes-Masson, Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, Montreal, and Jeremy Squire, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The findings were published recently in the British Journal of Cancer.

Tags: Health Sciences|Research Prominence

A life saving app

Monday March 23, 2015

By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

Kingston Fire Chief Rheaume Chaput displays the PulsePoint app on his cellphone.
Members of Kingston Fire and Rescue work on the rescue dummy.
Heart attack survivor Chet Babcock spoke at the PulsePoint launch. He collapsed during a hockey game and was revived by a defibrillator.
Queen's professor Steven Brooks emphasizes the importance of PulsePoint.
St. John Ambulance training coordinator Tyler O'Prey demonstrates how a defibrillator works.
Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson speaks at the PulsePoint event.

Queen’s University researcher Steven Brooks, working with the City of Kingston, Kingston Fire and Rescue and a number of other community partners, is launching PulsePoint, a mobile app that can save lives. This marks the first PulsePoint launch in Canada

Working with the Kingston Fire and Rescue dispatch system, the app will alert users trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when someone in a nearby public place needs CPR. The app also shows alerted CPR-trained individuals where to find a public automated external defibrillator (AED) if one is close.

“Calling 911, starting CPR and using an AED are the most significant interventions a bystander can make when someone suffers a cardiac arrest, doubling the chances of survival,” says Dr. Brooks, an emergency physician and clinician-scientist at Queen’s University and Kingston General Hospital. “Currently, the out-of-hospital survival rate for cardiac arrest is just five per cent in Canada. We can do better than this, and our hope is that PulsePoint will increase bystander intervention and help save more lives.”

Developed by Californian firefighters, making PulsePoint available in Kingston required a partnership that included Kingston Fire and Rescue, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Kingston General Hospital, Queen’s University and Bell Canada.

Chet Babcock, a cardiac arrest survivor, says an AED saved his life. Babcock’s CPR-trained hockey teammates, James McConnell and Casey Trudeau, administered CPR when he went into cardiac arrest at the INVISTA Centre. A third teammate, Mike Sears, went in search of a defibrillator. He found one with the help of Brad Amell, a volunteer firefighter who was in the foyer. They rushed back to administer the shock that likely restarted Babcock’s heart.

“The cardiac surgeon said that I would have had brain damage or died after five minutes if the AED [automated external defibrillator] hadn’t been used,” says Mr. Babcock, who is alive today thanks to the defibrillator. “Needless to say, I am a big supporter of AEDs.”

“Cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of preventable death and we know there are 40,000 sudden cardiac arrests in Canada each year. That’s one every 13 minutes. PulsePoint is all about connecting those who are CPR-trained to save lives with those who need their help,” says Richard Price, PulsePoint Foundation president.

Go to pulsepoint.org to download the app on your Apple or Android device if you are trained in CPR. The Queen’s community will also have an opportunity to sign up for PulsePoint April 7 at 1:30 pm during a demonstration at the ARC.

Tags: Campus Community|Health Sciences|Internationalization|Research Prominence

Harnessing the power of the tides

Thursday March 19, 2015

By Andrew Carroll, Gazette Editor

Tapping the renewable energy found in the oceans’ tides is the focus of an upcoming conference at the University of Oxford and a Queen’s professor will be one of the presenters.

Ryan Mulligan, an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering, will be presenting his work at the 4^th Oxford Tidal Energy Workshop, including the latest data collected by one of his Master’s students during a research cruise in the Bay of Fundy, one of the greatest potential sources of tidal energy in the world.

As a coastal engineer and oceanographer, Dr. Mulligan’s research is focused on the large-scale effects that tidal current turbines would have on the underwater environment.

“If we put out an array of tidal current turbines in the ocean to generate sufficient energy to power a city, which in the present economy isn’t feasible but could be in the future, we need several hundred turbines, like a windfarm but under water,” Dr. Mulligan explains. “My research uses computer models to examine the changes in the water levels, the currents and the sediment transport that could occur due to tidal energy extraction in the Bay of Fundy specifically.”

The data collected from the Bay of Fundy provides “validation against observation” for the modelling being done, he says.

The workshop also offers him a great opportunity to meet with others working in the field, particularly in the United Kingdom where the largest amount of research is being done.

“I know several people who will be there and read the work of others but I will get the chance to meet them, learn about tidal research at UK sites and get a better feel for how my research fits into the global perspective,” he says. “Some researchers are doing similar work on basin-scale modelling and the impacts on the marine environment, and others are investigating turbulence around the turbine blades and small-scale issues related to designing turbines, so there’s a large range of scales of fluid motion that are going to be discussed.”

Dr. Mulligan says he is honoured to be the only Canadian, and only North American, to present at the UK-focused research symposium that will bring together many of the leading researchers in the field.

Extracting energy from tidal currents is still in the early stages of research, Dr. Mulligan points out, but there are projects that are bringing harnessing the vast amounts of power closer to a reality.

The workshop will be held March 23-24 at University of Oxford.

Tags: Engineering and Applied Science|Internationalization|Research Prominence

When research goes pop

Thursday March 19, 2015

By Rosie Hales, Communications Officer

At the intersection of academic research and popular culture comes the resurrection of a long dead opium eater.

The opium eater in question is the 19th century English essayist Thomas De Quincey, known for his autobiography Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. De Quincey also happens to be Queen’s professor Robert Morrison’s academic raison d’être and the subject of novelist David Morrell’s two latest books.

Dr. Morrell, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Iowa, turns back the clock to Victorian England in his book Murder as a Fine Art (2013) to write about De Quincey as the suspect in a gruesome murder case. In his newest book, Inspector of the Dead (2015), Morrell follows De Quincey as he races to halt an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria.

The timing was perfect as when Dr. Morrell was beginning research for his De Quincey-inspired novel, Dr. Morrison was releasing his biography of De Quincey, The English Opium-Eater.

After Dr. Morrison offered his research expertise to Dr. Morrell to ensure the historical accuracy of the novels, both of Dr. Morrell’s books were co-dedicated to Dr. Morrison. Now, the burgeoning interest in De Quincey as a result of the novels means Dr. Morrison’s research, his biography and a new edition of De Quincey’s finest essays forthcoming with Oxford University Press, are reaching an ever-widening audience.

“The relationship between my scholarship and David’s fiction is a very good example of the ways in which academic research can reach out to and eventually shape popular culture,” says Dr. Morrison, a professor in the Department of English. “Research in the humanities matters because it deepens our understanding of the past, and often triggers imaginative and fictive engagements that inform the present and future. Society, for example, has been struggling for a long time with the issue of addiction. From different angles, David and I try to reveal the history and impact of that struggle.”

While the two have never actually met in person, emails back and forth for the last four years have kept their academic affiliation a prime example of how scholarly research can aid in the development of pop culture, and how pop culture frequently capitalizes on information and insights brought forward by scholarly research in the Humanities.

“When I was researching for these novels I had access to a variety of materials, but nothing compares to the kind of information Robert was able to provide me with,” says Dr. Morrell, whose debut novel First Blood saw the introduction of the action hero John Rambo. “To me, Rob comes across as the kind of professor that every student should want to spend hours with.”

Both Dr. Morrison and Dr. Morrell are big proponents when it comes to the importance of an education in the humanities or liberal arts.

“A humanities or liberal arts education is something of an education in cultural survival. We’re teaching an open, creative and vital approach to culture so that we’re not sleepwalking through life but instead engaging with the world around us and moving forward,” says Dr. Morrell.

Inspector of the Dead will be released on March 24, 2015. For more information on Robert Morrison’s research, please follow this link.

Tags: Arts and Culture|Arts and Science|Research Prominence

A flawed system

Tuesday March 17, 2015

By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

Queen’s University professor Allyson Harrison has uncovered anomalies and issues with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV), one of the most widely used intelligence tests in the world. IQ scores are used to predict educational success, to help identify intellectual disabilities or intellectual giftedness and to establish whether a person has a specific learning disability.

For her research, Dr. Harrison and her colleagues examined the differences between Canadian and American WAIS-IV scores from 861 postsecondary students from across Ontario. The research identified a trend where the individual’s scores were consistently lower using the Canadian test scoring system. The WAIS-IV scores are used to make diagnostic decisions on the person’s ability relative to their peer group.

“Looking at the normal distribution of scores, you’d expect that only about five per cent of the population should get an IQ score of 75 or less,” says Dr. Harrison. “However, while this was true when we scored their tests using the American norms, our findings showed that 21 per cent of college and university students in our sample had an IQ score this low when Canadian norms were used for scoring.”

The trend was the same across all IQ scores, with Canadian young adults in college or university consistently receiving a lower IQ score if the Canadian norms were used. There were fewer gifted students identified when Canadian norms were used, as well as more students who were said to be intellectually impaired.

When scoring the WAIS-IV, Canadian psychologists have the option to compare the obtained raw score with the normative data gathered in either Canada or the USA.

Dr. Harrison notes these findings have serious implications for educational and neuropsychological testing. “Research shows that you can go from being classified as average to intellectually impaired based only on whether American or Canadian norms are used to rank the obtained raw IQ score.”

The research was published in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment.

Tags: Arts and Science|Research Prominence

Positioning Canada for global research leadership

Friday March 13, 2015

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada president Mario Pinto (BSc '75, PhD '80) visited Queen’s University Friday to present the draft NSERC 2020 Strategic Plan. Dr. Pinto is travelling across Canada to solicit feedback about the proposed plan. He sat down with senior communications officer Mark Kerr to talk about the plan.

Mark Kerr: Tell us a bit more about yourself and your time at Queen’s?

Mario Pinto: My time at Queen’s was wonderful. I started off as an undergraduate student initially in mathematics and computing and then I changed into life sciences and then biochemistry. Eventually I graduated with a BSc in chemistry. I have fond memories of Queen’s because I met my wife in the Jock Harty Arena at the orientation registration on my first day at the university, and we just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. I also did my PhD at Queen’s. I was based at Queen’s but also worked at University of Toronto and Dalhousie. Queen’s was my home base because I had a particularly great supervisor, Dr. Walter Szarek, and we managed to do great things together.

MK: Since becoming NSERC president, you’ve made it a priority to travel across the country and get feedback on the NSERC 2020 Strategic Plan. What themes emerged from the extensive consultations?

MP: The first was the need to promote science culture in Canada. Until STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) becomes a household word in this country, I don’t believe we are going to be able to achieve the investment in research and innovation we desire.

The second theme deals with the diversified competitive research base across Canada. We have to admit that we have a highly diverse eco-system consisting of colleges, polytechnics, primarily undergraduate universities, highly intensive research universities, and medium research intensive universities. Each has a skill set so our plan is to leverage the respective strengths of those different sectors and take advantage of them.

Diversity also relates to populations. We have to do a much better job of attracting women and Aboriginal Canadians to sciences. This is an initiative I am particularly passionate about. We have to make career opportunities in STEM far more attractive to women and Aboriginal Canadians and provide mentoring so that they progress through the ranks at all levels of the education system.

The third theme has to do with recognizing and strengthening the dynamic interaction between foundational research and applied research activities. We have to admit that there is a dynamic interaction between the two and there isn’t a hand-off from discovery to innovation. Rather, discovery feeds into innovation and, in turn, innovation feeds back into discovery.

The final theme is “going global.” In Canada, we have strengths but there are also gaps. In order to innovate effectively, we have to partner with researchers in other countries, either bilaterally or multilaterally, and to take the best of complementary expertise in those different groups.

MK: How will NSERC go about achieving the vision laid out in this plan?

MP: As the leader in funding discovery research and one of the prime connectors between the different organizations working in the research and innovation space, we should be reaching out and building bridges to other organizations. That’s something I’ve already initiated where, once again, we will leverage our respective strengths to achieve our four goals. We currently fund 11,300 professors and 30,500 students and postdoctoral fellows. That represents a force of ambassadors. We have to speak with one voice and show support for the four objectives, be consistent in presenting those. As the coordinating body NSERC can leverage these strengths to make a dramatic impact.

MK: What does the plan mean for Queen’s University and the researchers working at the institution?

MP: I think Queen’s is in an ideal position for success in general. It’s well recognized – you have world class researchers, you have excellent students, you have excellent faculty. You are well suited and you are well positioned to make a serious impact. Canadians do well on the world stage and we know that. I think it’s an understatement that students from Queen’s are well equipped to take advantage of emerging opportunities, and respond to emerging challenges.

After all, this is why we are in the business of research and innovation. That’s why I took up the challenge to be the president of NSERC because I think we have a responsibility to solve global challenges. I encourage students and faculty to respond to the web-based survey and give us their insight.

Visit the website to review and provide feedback on the NSERC 2020 plan.

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Research Prominence

Sharing ideas worth spreading

International student wins Three Minute Thesis

Policy series celebrates inaugural director's legacy

Testimony on the Hill

A cancer research breakthrough

A life saving app

Harnessing the power of the tides

When research goes pop

A flawed system

Positioning Canada for global research leadership

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