University of Regina researchers to receive $3M in federal grants

Saskatchewan

Prince Albert National Park

Located in central Saskatchewan, the park "showcases the amazing ecological diversity found in the transition between prairie fescue grasslands and the lakes and wetlands of the mixed wood boreal forest." (Source: Parks Canada)

Researchers at the University of Regina have received nearly $3 million in federal funding for over a dozen projects.

The funding is provided through the government’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Discovery Grants Program, meant to support long-term, curiosity-driven research.

The researchers will receive the funding over the next five years.

Prairie wetlands research

Among the U of R’s beneficiaries is biology professor Britt Hall, who is conducting research on Prairie wetlands.

She will receive $220,000 over five years. Hall says wetlands offer an “incredibly valuable” ecological service by storing water through droughts and help to reduce flooding during wet periods.

They also provide food and other resources to many migrating birds and other animals on top of storing carbon and other nutrients, helping to maintain water quality.

However, wetland ponds also contain the toxic metal mercury, which is released into the atmosphere mainly through coal burning.

“My team is examining what happens to various forms of mercury as wetlands dry out because of climate change or human removal,” Hall said in a news release.

“My team hypothesizes that as they dry, mercury stored in the sediments changes form and is released into the atmosphere, causing a shift that could turn wetlands from places where mercury is stored into sources of mercury pollution.”

Building blocks of the atomic nucleus

Physics professor Garth Huber is seeking to understand the building blocks of the atomic nucleus, one of the major questions in modern physics.

He says the work will help provide deeper insight into the origin of visible mass in the universe.

“Protons and neutrons, known collectively as nucleons, are made up of even more fundamental constituents called quarks and gluons. While scientists know a great deal about these particles, important gaps remain,” Huber said.

He will receive $850,000 through the Subatomic Physics Discovery Grant over five years for his efforts.

The U of R says Huber’s team is looking to better understand how quarks and gluons interact to produce the matter that makes up our world.

Huber and his team are conducting experiments at the Jefferson lab in the United States where the professor co-leads ongoing PionLT and KaonLT experiments.

“Our research addresses urgent environmental questions on the Prairies, explores the foundations of the physical universe, and many other project in between,” said Chris Yost, vice-president of research at the U of R.

“Not only is this work helping to create learning opportunities for the next generation of researchers, it’s making an impact here in Saskatchewan and beyond.”

Other recipients include:

• Dr. Ifran Al-Anbagi received $235,000 for his project, Intelligent zero-trust blockchain architectures for securing mission-critical IoT systems
• Dr. Mohan Babu received $325,000 for his project, Investigating uncharacterized Escherichia coli proteins implicated in cell division
• Dr. Andrew Cameron received $240,000 for his project, Integration into host networks: Transcriptional controls of plasmid persistence and dissemination
• Dr. Martin Frankland received $70,000 for his project, Homotopical and homological structures in topology
• Dr. Allen Herman received $185,000 for his project, Algebras and association schemes
• Dr. Golam Kabir received $215,000 for his project, Integrated assessment and optimization of the Canadian CCUS supply chain: A techno-economic, environmental, and risk-resilient approach.
• Dr. Dabanjana Kundu received $185,000, plus $12,500 Early Career Researcher supplemental funding, for her project, Arithmetic of elliptic curves via Iwasawa theory
• Dr. Malek Mouhoub received $235,000 for his project, Preference-centric multiple objective optimization for multi-criteria decision making
• Dr. Donald Stanley received $170,000 for his project, Realization of cohomology
• Dr. Paitoon Tontiwachwuthikul received $215,000 for his project, Creating the new generation of CO2 capture processes using novel solvent regeneration techniques with designer solvents for Canada’s Energy Transition to a Lower Carbon Energy Future
• Dr. Mark Vanderwel received $195,000 for his project, Climate- and fire-driven biomass change across Canada’s western boreal forest
• Dr. Sandra Zilles received $300,000 for her project, Theory of sample-efficient interactive learning