Researchers at the University of British Columbia have received $4.95 million over six years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to fund three innovative training programs in the biological sciences.
NSERC today announced $32 million in grants from its new Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) program. The program is designed to give science graduates the enhanced skills set they need for careers in industry, government or academia.
Three of the 20 programs funded across Canada in this inaugural round of the competition are based at UBC.
“UBC’s success in this first round of CREATE awards is encouraging, and perhaps reflects previous successes in infrastructure competitions,” says Don Brooks, associate vice president research at UBC. “We have a very strong community of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who actively seek opportunities to collaborate with colleagues in other disciplines. We’re grateful to NSERC for providing this opportunity to the next generation of researchers.”
The projects at UBC are:
Working on Walls: Understanding Plant Cell Wall Formation
Student trainees in this project led by UBC Prof. Brian Ellis will work with an interdisciplinary group of plant biologists to unravel the intricate mechanisms by which plants turn photosynthetic products into cell wall structures – a major part of the terrestrial biomass and a potential source of “second generation” biofuels.
BRITE: Training the Next Generation of Biodiversity Researchers
Global climate change, habitat loss and associated extinctions have made it more and more important to understand the factors that generate and maintain biodiversity. The Biodiversity Research: Integrative Training and Education program, led by UBC Prof. Sarah Otto, will produce a generation of scientists able to integrate diverse approaches to understand and alleviate the loss of species diversity.
Training on High-Throughput Technologies in Biological Research
Biological research is being transformed by new tools and approaches that rapidly, and deeply, analyze large numbers of DNA, protein and cell samples. A multidisciplinary training program based in the Centre for High-throughput Biology and led by UBC Canada Research Chair Stephen Withers will bring together students in engineering, chemistry, physics and biology to both develop and exploit state-of-the-art instrumentation in mass spectrometry, next-generation sequencing, robotic sample handling and nanofabrication.
NSERC is a federal agency that supports some 26,500 university students and postdoctoral fellows in their advanced studies.
Launched in 2008, CREATE targets interdisciplinary research within the natural sciences and engineering, in areas such as nanotechnology, aquaculture, biomedical engineering and biodiversity.
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