July 10, 2025
Education News Canada

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER UNIVERSITY
StFX researchers awarded $1.5 million in federal funding

July 10, 2025

St. Francis Xavier University is pleased to announce researchers have been awarded $1.5 million in federal funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Almost a million dollars comes from NSERC and more than $550,000 in SSHRC funding has been awarded to support numerous research on campus from wetlands restoration to improving police relations in communities.

"Our researchers are exceptional in their field," said Dr. Erin Morton, Associate Vice-President, Research, Graduate, and Professional Studies at StFX. "This essential funding will enhance research efforts at StFX and continue the great work done in partnership with students and colleagues from across Canada and around the world."

NSERC funds visionaries, explorers and innovators who are searching for the scientific and technical breakthroughs that will benefit Canada, while SSHRC promotes and supports research and research training in the humanities and social sciences. NSERC funding is for a five year term and SSHRC funding is for two years.

The following is a list of researchers, their projects, and funds awarded.

NSERC Discovery Grant:

  • Cory Bishop, Biology, "Ecology and Evolution of a Symbiosis between Unicellular Green Algae and Amphibian Egg Masses", $26,759/yr for 5 years
  • Graham Clark, Earth and Environmental Sciences, "Carbon Exchange and Storage Quality of Atlantic Canada Wetland Restoration", $39,000/yr for 5 years
  • Kyran Cupido, Math and Stats, "Spatial Modeling in Actuarial Science", $35,000/yr for 5 years
  • Darien Dewolf, Math and Stats, "Models of Partiality in Geometry and Topology", $35,000/yr for 5 years
  • Ralph Redden, Psychology, "On the Understanding of Attention in the Lab and the Real World" $33,000/yr for 5 years

Graham Clark, Kyran Cupido, Darien Dewolf, and Ralph Redden also received the one time $12,500 Early Career Researcher (ECR) Discovery Launch supplement in year one.

Dan Kane, Human Kinetics, "Metabolic control in thermal budgets of integrated organisms", $22,000/yr for 2 years (Discovery Development Grant)

Also announced is the Canada Graduate Scholarship (Masters) awarded to Meaghan Amaral, Earth and Environmental Studies, "Quantifying Landfill Methane Emissions from the Active Working Face", $27,000 (one year).

SSHRC Insight Development Grants (All grants are two-year awards. The amounts shown are the total for the two years):

  • Terry Beaulieu (Anthropology): Challenging Colonial Archaeological Perceptions and Processes Along the Red Deer River, $66,040 
  • Katelynn Carter-Rogers (Management): Building Allies in Justice: Improving Police Relations with Communities Through Trauma-Informed Allyship Education and Training, $71,476 (with colleagues from SMU and Georgian College)
  • Laura Estill (English): Shakespeare and Taxonomy, $59,977
  • Marc Husband and Evan Throop-Robinson (Education): Number Talks and YouTube: Helping students add, subtract, multiply and divide, $52,827 (with a colleague from York University)
  • (Mickey) Jutras and Wendy Mackey (Education): System-Level Equity Leaders in Canadian K-12 Education Systems: Roles, Responsibilities, Resistance, and Resilience, $53,140 (with a colleague from University of Saskatchewan)
  • Bhavik Parikh and Yen Nguyen (Accounting and Finance): How cross-border mergers and acquisitions contribute to technology transfer: The role of automation, $63,506 (with colleagues from RMIT Australia and Florida Atlantic University)
  • Elvira Prusaczyk (Psychology): Breaking the Cycle: Examining the Roots of Racial Prejudice in Childhood, $45,531 (with a colleague from York University)
  • Jose Sousa (Coady): Reimagining Power and Subjectivities in Community-University Partnerships: A Post-Structuralist Inquiry into Community-Based Research, $72,743 (with colleagues from UBC and University of Regina)
  • Kara Thompson (Psychology): The Influence of Zero-Alcohol Product Marketing on the Attitudes and Behaviours of Young Adults, $67,793 (with colleagues from Dalhousie, University of Victoria, and Public Health Ontario)

Also announced is the Canada Graduate Scholarship (Masters) of $27,000 that has been awarded to Thomas (Cole) MacDonald (Computer Science) "Can we measure the biases that occur in organizations/social media news?" and Lawrence (Caelen) Mattie (Computer Science) "AI Transparency Using Verifiable Explanations."

For more information

St. Francis Xavier University
P.O. Box 5000
Antigonish Nova Scotia
Canada B2G 2W5
www.stfx.ca/


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