The Magic of Flow

Université Laval engineer captures prestigious Canadian research prize

Ottawa, Ontario, March 11, 2004 – As a young boy growing-up in Strasbourg, France, the son of a working-class Moroccan family, Mosto Bousmina was enraptured by magic. He knew that he was watching illusion, but he revelled in the arrival of the seemingly impossible. Soon he began creating his own tricks, experimenting with the special properties of materials as he found them: magnets, elastics and various solids and liquids.

Today the Université Laval polymer engineering professor is still mixing materials, devoted to understanding their basic properties and their potential – and still creating gasps of surprise. The latest high-tech trick he's working on? Turning a lump of clay into a transparent, ultra-light, bullet-proof material.

Dr. Bousmina is a specialist in discovering the way in which plastics, and their additives, flow and mix. His laboratory is a world leader in this field, technically called the rheology of multiphase polymeric systems.

“If you want to change a material's qualities, for example, its strength or conductivity, you have to do it in the molten state. You need to understand how the material flows and how changing this will change the material's final properties,” says Dr. Bousmina, the Canada Research Chair in Polymer Physics and Nanomaterials.

Bousmina’s internationally acclaimed work today captured him an NSERC Steacie Fellowship, one of Canada’s top science and engineering honours.

The award was among six announced today by Lucienne Robillard, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, and Dr. Tom Brzustowski, President of NSERC.

“NSERC Steacie Fellows are quickly rising to the top of their fields while providing role models for younger scientists and engineers,” said Minister Robillard. “Through their creativity and excellent research, they are helping Canada build the knowledge base needed for a 21^st century economy.”

“These awards are public recognition for outstanding scientific achievement,” said Dr. Brzustowski. “The researchers honoured today have already started their careers in an incredible way and I know that they will do great things for science in Canada.”

The science of polymer flow affects our lives from the feel of the toothbrush we use in the morning to the light switch we push when we go to bed. The names of these ubiquitous polymers are the vocabulary of our increasingly plastic world: polyurethane, PVC, polystyrene, ABS and polycarbonate.

As an engineer, just as he is as a magician, Dr. Bousmina is never content to see that something simply works. His passion has always been to grasp the fundamental properties that lie behind a process, and thus be able to predictively extend these properties to other situations by modeling the process using advanced mathematics, his favourite branch of science.

As an NSERC Steacie Fellow, Dr. Bousmina is bringing an ancient material into the age of nanotechnology.

“Nanomaterials offer lots of opportunities in creating materials with unique mechanical, electrical and barrier properties. But we're just at the beginning of our understanding. We don't know how to disperse this material at the nanoscale level. There are already some commercial nanomaterial products but these are made by trial and error. We don't understand the basic science behind this,” says Dr. Bousmina.

In his effort to see behind nature's nanomaterial slight of hand, Dr. Bousmina's 21-person lab will be focusing on how to effectively delaminate the nanoscale layers of clay, including using ultrasound to measure the exact energy required to separate two layers.

NSERC, now also known as Science and Engineering Research Canada, is a key federal agency investing in people, discovery, and innovation. It supports both basic university research through research grants, and project research through partnerships among postsecondary institutions, government and the private sector, as well as the advanced training of highly qualified people.

Contacts:

Dr. Mosto Bousmina
Tel.: (418) 656-2769
E-mail: bousmina@gch.ulaval.ca

Arnet Sheppard
NSERC
Tel.: (613) 995-5997
E-mail: arnet.sheppard@nserc.ca

The Prize

NSERC Steacie Fellowships are awarded to outstanding Canadian university scientists or engineers, who have earned their doctorate within the last 12 years, and whose research has already earned them an international reputation. Nominations are received by NSERC from universities across Canada and judged by a distinguished panel of independent experts. The awards include increased research funding from NSERC and payments to the universities to allow the Steacie Fellows to pursue their research full-time. They are also eligible to compete for a special Canada Foundation for Innovation Career Award. The announcement of these awards will be made later.

The six winners this year are:

• Dr. Mosto Bousmina – Université Laval
• Dr. Thomas Brabec – University of Ottawa
• Dr. George Eleftheriades – University of Toronto
• Dr. Lisa Jeffrey – University of Toronto
• Dr. Eric Hessels – York University
• Dr. Patrick Keeling – University of British Columbia

Dr. Edgar William Richard Steacie, for whom the awards are named, was a physical chemist and President of the National Research Council from 1952 to 1962. He strongly believed that:

• fundamental research is essential to the development of science;
• the individual is key to research, and individual ideas are ultimately responsible for important advances in science;
• there are no national boundaries in science; and
• complete freedom is required for creative work.

Dr. Steacie felt that promising young scientists are our greatest asset and should be given every opportunity to develop their own ideas. Through the NSERC Steacie Fellowships, his philosophy lives on.