TORONTO, August 27, 2008 -- York University professors Kari Hoffman, Cody Storry, Michael Scheid, Wendy Taylor and Andrew Toms have each been awarded $100,000 through the Ontario government’s Early Researcher Award program.
The awards, to be matched by $50,000 in research investment by York University, provide funding for topics that include psychology, mathematics, particle physics and cancer research. The awards will invest a total of $9.24 million to support 66 leading researchers while improving Ontario's ability to attract and retain the brightest research talent from around the world.
“Today’s investment is an important part of Ontario’s plan to build an innovation-driven economy,” said John Wilkinson, minister of research and innovation. “We are investing in the people who are pioneering the scientific breakthroughs that will improve health care, protect the environment, and ignite growth in the industries that will shape Ontario’s future.”
Kari Hoffman, assistant professor of psychology and biology in the Faculty of Health, is researching the relationship between ‘bottom-up’ or stimulus-driven neural activity, and ‘top-down’ memory-driven activity. Hoffman's team will explore which nerve cells are recruited to encode new stimuli, such as the faces of individuals, how newly-encoded patterns are transformed into memory, and how different patterns of activity can alter perception. Her research promises to reveal the mechanisms that underlie perception and memory formation, and could improve our understanding of epilepsy.
Cody Storry, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, is conducting antihydrogen research to produce and trap large numbers of antihydrogen atoms, an atom made entirely of antimatter that consists of one antielectron bound to one antiproton. His research group will compare the atomic structure of antihydrogen to that of hydrogen, providing the first direct comparison between matter and antimatter atoms and a strong test of fundamental symmetries in nature. Storry’s research will also compare measurements of the energy level structure of positronium, an electron bound to an antielectron, to the best theoretical predictions and provide a strong test of quantum electro-dynamic theory.
Michael Scheid, assistant professor of biology in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, studies a group of enzymes called protein kinases involved in the regulation of cell death, a process that becomes deregulated during cancer. Research by Scheid and his team will expose new targets that can be exploited for novel cancer treatments.
Wendy Taylor, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, is developing a low-noise, radiation-tolerant electronic readout for the replacement ATLAS inner-tracking detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. This facility, a promising research nexus for high-energy particle physics, will undergo a major upgrade to deliver higher data rates by 2015. The ATLAS detector requires significant upgrades to equip it to handle higher event rates and radiation doses. Taylor’s research team is developing the logical design elements of the ATLAS Module Controller Chip using programmable logic that has applications to supercomputers, medical imaging, data acquisition and cellular and Internet communications.
Andrew Toms, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, researches the classification of C*-algebras, specifically non-simple C*-algebras. This class of objects has its roots in quantum mechanics and affects much of modern mathematics, including group theory, geometry, and dynamics.
“The Early Researcher Award program is a critical provincial investment in the globally-competitive research being done at the University,” said Stan Shapson, York University’s Vice-President Research & Innovation. “These awards provide timely support and recognize the excellent scholarly work being undertaken by researchers early in their careers, and help to support the significant contributions they are making to the science research community.”
York University is the leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 190,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 11 faculties and 26 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.
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For more information, contact:
Elizabeth Monier-Williams, Research Communications, York University, 416-736-2100 x21069/ eamw@yorku.ca
