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Western gets more research funding

January 26, 2012
By Cameron Michael Smith

Researchers at Western were given several significant grants yesterday from Canada’s Foundation for Innovation, intended to fund new tools and other infrastructure to allow the researchers to continue projects with as much aid as possible. Six CFI projects were funded at Western alone, along with hundreds of others across Canada.

“We fund 131 institutions across the country,” Ryan Saxby Hill, spokesperson for CFI, said. “The mandate of the CFI is to support the research institutions in Canada by funding the research infrastructure.”

Western researchers applied to the Leaders Opportunity Fund for grants and were awarded them based on the results of a review by CFI, which considers the nature of the research and the intended expenditure of the awarded grant.

“We make our decisions based on a rigorous merit review process,” Saxby Hill explained. “It’s a really equitable distribution mechanism. Universities receive [grants] based on the research intensity at the institution.”

Although all research-intensive institutions that apply for the Leaders Opportunities Fund grants are considered, it is only those that meet a required degree of quality and ingenuity that are actually given money.

“There is a very high standard of excellence that is brought to bear on grants ordered by the CFI,” Saxby Hill concluded.

One of the researchers who displayed the required level of excellence was psychology and music professor Jessica Grahn, who was given the grant for equipment used to research the psychological effects of music on individuals with disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.

“It’s a federal infrastructure grant, which basically means it funds my equipment that is needed to do my research,” Grahn explained. “One of the big pieces of equipment this grant will fund is a sensor-filled walkway, which will be able to measure all sorts of parameters of patients’ movements to see how music affects their ability to walk.”

Grahn and other researchers at Western had to prove their research was significant and revolutionary enough to meet the requirements to obtain a CFI grant.

“We applied to the foundation, and in order to do the research I needed some equipment that Western didn’t already have,” Grahn explained. “We made the case for why the research was cutting-edge and how this equipment would bring our research to the next level.”

With these grants, researchers at Western will have the equipment needed to continue furthering advances in their respective fields, and distinguishing the university as a cutting-edge research institution.

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