In its latest round of Discovery Grant research funding, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) awarded more than $3.9 million to researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University. Their findings will have applications in machine learning, climate change adaptation, finance, supply chain management and immunology.
Funding recipients include:
NSERC Discovery Grants
Total awarded: $3,518,500 over five years, plus $87,500 in Discovery Launch Supplements
- Azam Asilian Bidgoli, assistant professor, Computer Science: "Toward efficient, accurate, and robust evolutionary machine learning"
- Stephanie DeWitte-Orr, professor, Health Sciences: "Long dsRNA, RNA interference and the interferon threshold: A comparative approach"
- Holly Fruehwald, assistant professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry: "Probing the chemical and mechanical interactions of electrode interfaces for clean energy applications"
- Shohini Ghose, professor, Physics: "Exploring quantum chaos and correlations in multipartite systems through theory and applications"
- Steven Maley, assistant professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry: "From mechanism to machine learning: Accelerating first-row metal catalyst discovery"
- Kenneth Maly, associate professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry: "Synthesis and self-assembly of new conjugated polycyclic compounds"
- Samuel Okegbile, assistant professor, Physics and Computer Science: "Adaptive and self-evolving artificial intelligence-driven security framework for dynamic digital twin networks"
- Michael Palmer, adjunct research professor, Geography and Environmental Studies: "Climate change disruptions to the biogeochemical cycling of metal(loid)s in northern aquatic environments"
- William Quinton, professor, Geography and Environmental Studies: "Understanding the impacts of permafrost thaw on surface water resources in northwestern Canada" (also awarded NSERC Northern Research Supplement)
- R. Mark Reesor, professor, Mathematics: "Studies in quantitative finance, simulation, and policy-related financial risks"
- Sukhjit Sehra, assistant professor, Computer Science: "Development of robust federated learning strategies to mitigate heterogeneity and resource constraints in dynamic transportation networks"
- Chunming (Victor) Shi, professor, Operations and Decision Sciences: "Building resilient mineral supply chains for Canada under trade barriers: Modeling and optimization approaches"
- Michael Wilkie, professor, Biology: "Strategies of ion regulation and ammonia excretion in phylogenetically ancient lampreys"
- Jonathan Mark Wilson, professor, Biology: "Gills to guts of ion regulation"
- Xinyuan Zhang, assistant professor, Operations and Decision Sciences: "Statistical learning and stochastic optimization under information frictions"
- Kaiming Zhao, professor, Mathematics: "Simple smooth representations of some Lie algebras"
NSERC Discovery Development Grants
Total awarded: $132,000 over two years
- Stephen Perry, professor, Kinesiology and Physical Education: "Neuromechanics of foot function during dynamic balance reactions and gait"
- Jason Venkiteswaran, associate professor, Geography and Environmental Studies: "Investigating sulfate declines in the context of catchments, lakes, climate change, and algal blooms in the decades after acid rain"
- Xu (Sunny) Wang, professor, Mathematics: "Modeling human dynamics and approximation theory in deep learning"
NSERC Research Tools and Instruments Grant
Total awarded: $65,550
- Jennifer Baltzer, professor, Biology: "Characterizing the impacts of short-interval reburns using remotely piloted aircraft systems"
