Our community had cause to celebrate on November 13, when the Government of Canada announced the latest Canadian Research Chairs (CRC's), as seven come from the University of Alberta.
Spend the next few minutes learning a little more about each of them and their work:
Yasmeen Abu-Laban - Faculty of Arts
Yasmeen Abu-Laban's research addresses the rights and treatment of marginalized peoples in the 21st century, and considers how these groups are impacted by large-scale change including neoliberal governance, the deepening of surveillance since 9/11, and a rapidly transforming communications environment and populist backlash. Her research will aid scholarly and practical understanding of citizenship and human rights over the past half-century, and contribute policy-relevant findings for human betterment.
Guanqun (Gavin) Chen - Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences
Quanqun Chen is working to increase our understanding of how seed oil (the need for which is expected to double globally by 2030) is formed. Guanqun's plant lipid biotechnology research involves metabolic engineering of plants, algae and yeast, developing crops with better characteristics, and genetic approaches to increasing seed oil content. The knowledge and discovery gained from his work will drive new approaches to improve yield and composition, and enable Guanqun to create high-value oils for food supplement use and industrial application such as biofuel.
Kerry Courneya - Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation
When Kerry Courneya first began his research program in the early 1990s, physical activity was not recognized as an important component of cancer care. Since then, he has helped change the landscape of exercise oncology research and helped advance knowledge and improve health outcomes for cancer patients. His current research focuses on understanding how physical activity can help patients prepare for treatment, recover after treatments, and improve long-term survival. The overall goal of Kerry's work is for physical activity to be adopted into widespread clinical oncology practices.
David Marchant - Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of infant hospitalization worldwide for which there is no vaccine and no therapeutics. To address this considerable burden on the healthcare system David Marchant and his team are studying cellular and viral genes that regulate RSV transmission and illness in the community. He is targeting these cellular and viral factors to develop the basis of novel therapeutic strategies. The findings of this work will be translated into RSV virulence diagnostics and new products for RSV treatment.
Janet Elliot - Faculty of Engineering
Janet Elliott is among the leading specialists in a new thermodynamic theory: Statistical Rate Theory. Her work has demonstrated remarkable links between events in the exotic sub-atomic world of quantum mechanics and events in the everyday world around us. Working closely with researchers in catalytic reaction engineering, oil sands processing and biomembranes, she foresees a wider acceptance of the theory. The potential also exists for the application of a better theoretical description of challenging physical processes like evaporation. It is a model that could address difficulties like the preservation of transplant tissue.
Yunjie Xu - Faculty of Science
Yunjie Xu is measuring how various intermolecular interaction forces come together in a concerted way to achieve chirality recognition in such complex environments as aqueous solutions and metal clusters. She is using and developing highly sophisticated spectroscopic techniques to capture chirality recognition processes with unprecedented details in order to gain quantitative insights into these fascinating processes. Yunjie's research could have far-reaching impacts in areas ranging from the creation of more efficient chiral catalysts to the design of better drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis - Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Evangelos Michelakis is taking a fresh approach to medicine that could result in effective and inexpensive treatments for two deadly diseases. He has found that both cancer and pulmonary hypertension are caused by excessive growth of cells in various parts of the body caused in part by defects in mitochondria. This has led to his study of the use of generic drugs for the treatment of these conditions which, if found effective, would result in major cost savings for governments and taxpayers. He's also involved in the development of a new training program on the emerging principles of molecular and mitochondrial medicine.