New Researchers Win Top NSERC Prizes
Five to receive national honours and cash awards
Ottawa, Ontario, March 31, 2003 – Allan Rock,
Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Dr. Rey Pagtakhan,
Minister of Veterans Affairs and the Secretary of State for Science,
Research and Development, and Dr. Tom Brzustowski, President of
NSERC, today announced the winner of the annual NSERC Howard Alper Postdoctoral
Prize, along with the four winners of the NSERC prizes for top doctoral
research in science or engineering.
The winners are:
“Today’s awards recognize some of the best and brightest
minds in the country,” said Minister Rock. “Supporting successful
Canadian researchers will help us achieve our goals of making Canada
a world-leader in research and development.”
“The successes of the winners at such an early stage in their
careers suggest that they will have brilliant futures in their chosen
fields,” said Minister Pagtakhan. “We congratulate them
and their host institutions for this outstanding achievement.”
With a series of articles in major international
science journals, Dr. Ryan Gregory is in the vanguard
of evolutionary studies into why there is such a large variation in
the amounts of DNA in different animals (salamanders, for example, have
twenty times as much DNA as humans!). He wants to understand what this
“genome diversity” means for animal body form, metabolism
and development.
As part of his Ph.D. research, he compiled the world's largest database
of animal genome sizes. Using a new computerized image analysis technique,
he made first time measurements of the genomes of about 400 invertebrates,
ranging from insects to spiders to earthworms. His online collection
(http://www.genomesize.com)
includes about 3,000 animals and has become a critical resource for
scientists worldwide. Contact Dr. Gregory at (212) 313-7629, rgregory@genomesize.com.
For a full-length feature on his work, go to: http://www.nserc.ca/news/2003/p030328_b5.htm.
Dr. David Bryce's doctoral
research established him as a modern explorer of the periodic table
– the ordering of elements from hydrogen to xenon and beyond,
that catalogues our understanding of the structure of matter. Using
nuclear magnetic resonance, he characterized for the first time some
of the 3-dimensional interactions specific to elements such as boron,
chlorine and chromium. This information is important to material scientists
who are trying to understand the fundamental properties of molecules
that contain these elements. Contact Dr. Bryce at (301) 496-2848,
dbryce@dal.ca. For a full-length
feature on his work, go to: http://www.nserc.ca/news/2003/p030328_b1.htm.
Dr. Erik Demaine was home
schooled by his father from age seven, toppled Dalhousie University's
age barrier by being admitted at 12, and now at 21 is the youngest professor
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The University of Waterloo
graduate's doctoral thesis solved what is known as the Carpenter's Rule
Problem. It is more than a kind of “Rubik's Cube” puzzle
for geniuses. Understanding the possibilities and limits of folding
and unfolding in general is important to a wide range of applications,
from sheet metal fabrication to airbag storage and bioinformatics, where
the math is used to understand, and perhaps predict, how proteins fold.
The Carpenter's Rule Problem also applies directly to the design of
robotic arms used in industry. Contact Dr. Demaine at (617) 253-6871,
edemaine@mit.edu. For a full-length
feature on his work, go to: http://www.nserc.ca/news/2003/p030328_b3.htm.
Dr. Martin Dvorak went out
for the cyber equivalent of a Sunday drive and set a world speed record.
In 2001, he achieved a speed of 305 gigahertz, at the time the fastest
bipolar transistor ever created in any semiconductor material. Dr. Dvorak's
research required that he work as a semiconductor jack-of-all-trades.
He refined the lithographic techniques for fabricating the chips, developed
high-speed test methods to verify the transistors' performances, and
worked through three generations of process technologies to create a
simple fabrication process. Many companies are now racing to develop
technologies based on similar transistors. Contact Dr. Dvorak at
(707) 569-9324, dvorak@sonic.net.
For a full-length feature on his work, go to: http://www.nserc.ca/news/2003/p030328_b4.htm.
Dr. David Vocadlo’s
doctoral work substantially clarified the general catalytic mechanism
for a key group of enzymes called glycosidases. When we eat pasta or
potatoes, glycosidases work on a carbohydrate such as starch by breaking
the links between the many constituent sugar units that make it up,
liberating them for use by our bodies. Understanding how catalysis works
in these specific cases is the first step in being able to make “designer”
enzymes, one of the holy grails of bioengineering. In the course of
his research, he also helped rewrite a classic paper from the 1960s
in which the first description of the three-dimensional structure of
an enzyme appeared. The enzyme function, accepted for years, was wrong.
Contact Dr. Vocadlo at (510) 643-2223, vocadlo@uclink.berkeley.edu.
For a full-length feature on his work, go to: http://www.nserc.ca/news/2003/p030328_b2.htm.
NSERC President Dr. Tom Brzustowski also congratulated the five
prize winners. “They have already shown a very high level of achievement.
We expect to hear a lot more from them as their careers progress.”
“The prizes are an acknowledgement of outstanding accomplishments
and exceptional promise for the future,” says Dr. Alper.
“It tells the winners that they are important to us, that we want
them to remain here because Canada will benefit from the major advances
in research and innovation that are likely to result from their investigations.”
Last week, NSERC announced the six 2003 NSERC Steacie Fellows: Dr. Gary
Saunders (University of New Brunswick); Dr. Victoria
Kaspi (McGill University); Dr. Zongchao
Jia (Queen’s University); Dr. Molly
Shoichet (University of Toronto); Dr. Kim
Vicente (University of Toronto); and Dr. Michel
Gingras (University of Waterloo).
The NSERC Steacie Fellowships, Doctoral Prizes and Howard Alper Postdoctoral
Prize will be presented in Ottawa at the end of the year.
NSERC is the primary federal agency investing in people, discovery
and innovation in science and technology. The Council supports both
basic university research through research grants, and project research
through partnerships among universities, governments and the private
sector, as well as the advanced training of highly qualified people.
For background information on the award winners, visit http://www.nserc.ca/about/award_e.htm.
For more information, contact:
Arnet Sheppard
News Bureau
NSERC
Phone: (613) 995-5997
E-mail: axs@nserc.ca
The Prize
The NSERC Howard Alper Postdoctoral Prize. Dr. Howard
Alper donated $100,000 from the proceeds of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada
Gold Medal for Science and Engineering that he won in 2000 to the setting
up of the new award that bears his name. Every year, an NSERC Postdoctoral
Fellow in one of the natural sciences or engineering disciplines is
awarded $20,000 on top of their Fellowship of $35,000. Candidates for
the prize are judged on their academic excellence as well as on their
potential for a research career. Interpersonal and communication skills,
and leadership abilities are also taken into account, along with the
candidates' overall research contributions.
The NSERC Doctoral Prizes. A national jury selects
the Doctoral medallists (two scientists and two engineers) from the
best Ph.D. graduates nominated by universities across Canada. Each winner
receives a $10,000 cash prize and a silver medal from NSERC.
Canada's Innovation Strategy
On February 12, 2002, the Government of Canada launched Canada's
Innovation Strategy, two papers that lay out a plan to address
skills and innovation challenges for the next decade. The paper released
by Minister Rock was entitled Achieving Excellence: Investing in
People, Knowledge and Opportunity. It proposes goals, targets and
priorities for Canada over the next decade to: create knowledge and
bring ideas to market more quickly; ensure a skilled workforce in the
new economy; modernize business and regulatory policies while protecting
the public interest; and strengthen communities by supporting innovation
at the local level. Today's announcement supports this strategy.
For more information about Canada's Innovation Strategy or
to obtain a copy of either Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning
for Canadians or Achieving Excellence: Investing in People,
Knowledge and Opportunity, please call 1-800-0 CANADA (1-800-622-6232)
or visit http://www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca
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