Erin Vollick with files from Shujanaa Mahendrarajah / en 91³Ô¹Ï scholars lead in prestigious graduate and post-doctoral research awards /news/u-t-scholars-lead-prestigious-graduate-and-post-doctoral-research-awards <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">91³Ô¹Ï scholars lead in prestigious graduate and post-doctoral research awards</span> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>sgupta</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2014-08-18T04:29:37-04:00" title="Monday, August 18, 2014 - 04:29" class="datetime">Mon, 08/18/2014 - 04:29</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">PhD candidate Miles Montgomery discusses his research with the Honourable Ed Holder (right) and the Honourable Peter Van Loan and Professor Milica Radisic (rear) during a tour of 91³Ô¹Ï's Institute for Biomaterials &amp; Biomedical Engineering (photo by John </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/erin-vollick" hreflang="en">Erin Vollick</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/erin-vollick-files-shujanaa-mahendrarajah" hreflang="en">Erin Vollick with files from Shujanaa Mahendrarajah</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/shujanaa-mahendrarajah" hreflang="en">Shujanaa Mahendrarajah</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Erin Vollick with files from Shujanaa Mahendrarajah</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/breaking-research" hreflang="en">Breaking Research</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/top-stories" hreflang="en">Top Stories</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/students" hreflang="en">Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/science" hreflang="en">Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/ibbme" hreflang="en">IBBME</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/engineering" hreflang="en">Engineering</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/awards" hreflang="en">Awards</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item">Innovations range from injectable heart patches to HIV-battling chickenpox viruses</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>They’re trying to cure AIDS and cancer, improve teaching methods and mend damaged hearts. And they’ve just received some very prestigious support for their work.</p> <p>The Government of Canada announced this year’s Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships and Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships August 14 and the list includes 34 doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows from the 91³Ô¹Ï − the most in the country.&nbsp;</p> <p>New Vanier Scholar <strong>Miles Montgomery</strong>, who hopes his work “will save people’s lives 20 years from now†says the awards are an investment for all Canadians.</p> <p>“Two hundred families are going to lose someone they love today – and the cost of heart failure to the health system will be an estimated $21 billion,†said Montgomery, whose work on live, beating heart tissue was showcased at the announcement.&nbsp;</p> <p>"That’s the reason I come into the lab every morning ready to work.â€</p> <p>Before announcing this year’s winners, the Honourable Ed Holder, Minister of State (Science and Technology) joined the Honourable <strong>Peter Van Loan</strong> (91³Ô¹Ï alumnus and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons) to tour the cardiac tissue engineering lab led by Professor <strong>Milica Radisic</strong>. It’s where doctoral student Montgomery aims to overcome the challenges associated with creating an injectable patch of living, human tissue into patients with damaged hearts. (<a href="http://news.utoronto.ca/photo_gallery?photoset_id=72157646082295337">See a photo gallery of the tour</a>.)</p> <p>The Vanier Canada Graduate scholarships and Banting Fellowships were launched by the Government of Canada in 2008 and 2010 respectively to attract and retain world-class doctoral and post-doctoral talent.&nbsp;</p> <p>Considered the most prestigious awards of their kind, this year they represented a $34.7 million investment in research across the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering, social sciences and humanities.&nbsp;</p> <p>This year, 26 Vanier Scholarships and eight Banting Fellowships were awarded to 91³Ô¹Ï recipients, including:</p> <ul> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> Banting Fellow&nbsp;<strong>Santiago Rincon-Fallardo</strong>, who is exploring the large-scale incorporation of innovative teaching methods into educational institutions</li> <li> Vanier Scholar <strong>Catia Perciani</strong>, who is conducting studies into the chickenpox virus (varicella-zoster, or VZV) for its potential application to HIV/AIDS research</li> <li> Banting Fellow <strong>Elizabeth Willis</strong>, who is studying the possibilities of a molecule called PSA as a cancer cell-targeting agent</li> </ul> <p>“I’m proud that more than one in 10 of these awards has gone to the 91³Ô¹Ï,†said Professor <strong>Locke Rowe</strong>, the University’s dean of graduate studies, who noted that 91³Ô¹Ï has received approximately 150 over the last five years. “These are core assets to the University and core assets to Canada.â€&nbsp;</p> <p>The full list of 91³Ô¹Ï recipients can be found below.&nbsp;</p> <div> Banting:</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <ul> <li> <strong>Ian Burgess</strong> for Colorimetric Biosensor Readout for Portable Low-Cost Disease Diagnosis&nbsp;(Materials Science and Technology)</li> <li> <strong>Stuart Campbell</strong>&nbsp;for Origins of trait diversity in flowering plants: Understanding how mating systems shape the evolution of plant defence using genomic and experimental field studies of natural selection (Evolution and Ecology)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Jeremy Leconte</strong>&nbsp;for Understanding the extreme diversity of exoplanet atmospheric regimes: Linking new-generation 1D/3D climate models with observations&nbsp;(Astronomy and Astrophysics)&nbsp;</li> <li> <strong>Yunfeng Li</strong>&nbsp;for Nanofibrillar microgels as artificial microenvironments for stem cell studies&nbsp;(Polymer Chemistry)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Niels Niessen&nbsp;</strong>for Speculation: Realism in a Posthuman Age (Literature and Modern Languages)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Santiago Rincon-Gallardo</strong>&nbsp;for Bringing effective instructional innovation to scale: A multi-case study (Education)</li> <li> <strong>Ryan Stevenson</strong> for It’s only a matter of time: Neural networks underlying multisensory perceptual binding (Sensory Systems and Perception)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Elizabeth Willis</strong>&nbsp;for A Chemical Biology Approach to the Study of Polysialic Acid in Cancer</li> </ul> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> Vanier:&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <ul> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Daniel Anstett&nbsp;</strong>for Latitudinal Gradients in Herbivory and Plant Defence (Evolution and Ecology)</li> <li> <strong>Jonathan&nbsp;Cook</strong>&nbsp;for Biophysical analysis of HIV-1 viral glycoprotein-mediated interleukin signal modulation (Virology)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Joe Curnow</strong>&nbsp;for Changing minds, changing communities: Learning racial justice in a community of practice&nbsp;(Education)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Michael DaSilva</strong>&nbsp;for The Legitimacy and Limits of Constitutional Health Rights (Societal &amp; Cultural Dimensions)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Randle DeFalco</strong>&nbsp;for International Criminal Law, Human Rights and the Problem of Indirect Violence: An Interactional Account&nbsp;(Law)</li> <li> <strong>Robyn Elphinstone</strong>&nbsp;for 'Pharmed' Red Blood Cells as Novel Therapeutics for Life Threatening-Infections (Immunology-Transplantation)</li> <li> <strong>Daniel Felsky</strong>&nbsp;for Evaluating Gene-Gene Interactions for Detection of Risk for Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease using Established and Novel Neuroimaging Phenotypes (Genetics)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Amit Grinberg</strong>&nbsp;for Holding the Stick from the Middle - an Ethnography of Palestinians Employed as Fieldworkers by Israeli Human Rights NGO's&nbsp;(Anthropology)</li> <li> <strong>Kathryn Hopperton</strong> for Amyloid beta induced inflammation and its resolution by omega-3 fatty acids in a mouse model of Alzheimer's Disease (Nutrition)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Rachel&nbsp;Keunen</strong>&nbsp;for Development of an Analytical Tool Utilizing Electrochemical Detection Methods For the Measuring of Protein Kinase Activity on a Protein Substrate Using Ferrocene-Adenosine Triphosphate (Fc-ATP) as a Co-substrate (Anyalytical Chemistry)</li> <li> <strong>Natasha Lane</strong>&nbsp;for How should family physicians be paid to reduce socioeconomic disparities in heart failure outcomes? (Health Services Research)</li> <li> <strong>Felix Leung</strong>&nbsp;for Integrating high-throughput technologies for the identification and validation of ovarian cancer biomarkers (Genomics, Proteomics, And Bioinformatics)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Katharina Maier&nbsp;</strong>for Half way to freedom? How female offenders rebuild their lives within the halfway house setting&nbsp;&nbsp;(Criminology)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Jessica Mathie</strong>&nbsp;for The intersection of word formation, sentence structure and meaning in an Australian Aboriginal language&nbsp;&nbsp;(Linguistics)&nbsp;</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Christina Matzen</strong>&nbsp;for Women's Prisons in Twentieth-Century Germany: Gendered Punishment from the Kaiser to the Cold War&nbsp;&nbsp;(History)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Miles Montgomery&nbsp;</strong>for Designing an Elastic Scaffold with Shape-Memory for Functional Tissue Delivery (Biomedical Engineering)</li> <li> <strong>Catia Perciani</strong>&nbsp;for Immunological Characterization of Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV) as a Replicating Viral Vector for an HIV Vaccine (Virology)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Cameron Ritchie</strong>&nbsp;for Performance of steel hollow structural sections, hollow and concrete-filled, subject to blast and impact loading&nbsp;(Structural Engineering)</li> <li> <strong>Nardin Samuel</strong>&nbsp; for Epigenetic analysis of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome cancers for identification of novel mechanisms of tumorigenesis in cancer susceptibility (Cancer)</li> <li> <strong>Shrey Sindhwani</strong>&nbsp;for Nanomaterial based enrichment of blood proteins for cancer detection and monitoring (Cancer)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Etye Steinberg</strong>&nbsp;for The Concept of a Person and The Demands of Morality&nbsp;(Philosophy)</li> <li> <strong>Lorraine Sugar</strong> for Data, Metrics, and Monitoring Systems for City-based Climate Action&nbsp;(Civil Engineering)</li> <li> <strong>Sujata Thapa-Bhattarai </strong>for The right to mobility in the city: gender, transportation and urban public space in Kathmandu and Kabul&nbsp;(Urban and Regional Studies, Environmental Studies)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Simon Wisnovsky</strong>&nbsp;for Eliminating Platinum Chemotherapy-induced Peripheral Neuropathy through Subcellular Targeting of a Platinum Drug (Cancer)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>You Wu&nbsp;</strong>for Characterizing the effects of human milk oligosaccharides and prebiotics on the intestinal epithelial barrier in the setting of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (Cell Biology)</li> <li style="line-height: 18px;"> <strong>Adam Zajdlik</strong>&nbsp;for Development of 1,1-boryl carbene-enabled boron transfer methodology&nbsp;(Organic Chemistry)&nbsp;</li> </ul> <div> <em>Erin Vollick is a writer with IBBME at the 91³Ô¹Ï; Shujanaa Mahendrarajah is a writer with 91³Ô¹Ï News.</em></div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-picpath field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">picpath</div> <div class="field__item">sites/default/files/2014-08-18-vanier-banting-holder-loan-final.jpg</div> </div> Mon, 18 Aug 2014 08:29:37 +0000 sgupta 6428 at