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Research awards honour faculty members 

New and established researchers are recognized for their contributions

On June 8, the Office of Research held the annual University Research Awards Reception to honour some of Concordia’s most promising and innovative researchers displaying, “passion for research and dedication to the university and its students,” said VP Research and Graduate Studies Louise Dandurand, the evening’s host, to more than 50 attendees in the suspended boardroom on the second floor of the MB Building.

Receiving university Research Awards in the Established category were Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Andreas Athienitis and History Professor Ronald Rudin. In the Emerging category was Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Professor Rolf Wüthrich and English/Études françaises Professor Patrick Leroux.

Each awardee will receive a research grant and hold the title of Concordia University Research Fellow for one year.

Also acknowledged at the ceremony were this year’s winners of the Petro-Canada Young Innovators Awards (see Journal, May 13, 2010), Finance Professor Yaxuan Qi and Physics Professor Alexandre Champagne.

This awards program was created to recognize and help support the work of outstanding young faculty researchers at Canadian universities, colleges and major research institutes.

Last year’s Young Innovator recipients were Psychology Professor Andrew Ryder and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Professor Hoi Dick Ng (see Journal, May 7, 2009). Wüthrich won the Young Innovators award in 2007 (see Journal, Nov. 8, 2007).

Hoi Dick Ng and Champagne were also among those honoured for having received grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s Leaders Opportunity Fund (CFI-LOF). Handed out by Rodrigue Hurtubise, CFI’s Manager of Public Affairs, other certificate recipients included Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Xavier Ottenwaelder, Marketing Professor Bianca Grohmann, and Mechanical and Industrial Professors Lyes Kadem (team leader) and Georgios Vatistas (project co-investigator, along with Ng).

The CFI-LOF grants are designed to help universities attract and retain the very best researchers, and offer universities the opportunity to acquire infrastructure for their leading research faculty to undertake innovative research.