15 February 2016

The Université de Sherbrooke continues to stand out for its cutting-edge research, as demonstrated by the $7.2M in funding received from the prestigious Canada Research Chairs Program.

Nine chairs, of which eight are new, in engineering, medicine, science, and philosophy have received funding. Six of them will receive $500 000 each over five years, while the other three will each receive $1.4M in funding over seven years.

• Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Fluid Actuators
  Chairholder: Jean-Sébastien Plante
  Intelligent fluid actuators have the potential to revolutionize robotics. Pairing high performance with competitive cost, they may become the muscles for robots that are light, powerful, and make fluid movements. They may have various applications in the medical, aeronautics, household, and transportation industries.

• Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics and Discovery of New Protein
  Chairholder: Xavier Roucou
  Proteins are at the core of normal and abnormal cell function. New treatment options may emerge through exploring the diversity of their mechanisms of action using an interdisciplinary approach that combines proteomics, biochemistry, cellular biology, bioinformatics, and structural biology.

• Canada Research Chair in Efficient Electric Vehicles with Hybridized Energy Storage Systems
  Chairholder: João Pedro Fernandes Trovao
  The shift towards greener practices in the transportation industry includes, in particular, electric vehicles that perform better and are more autonomous. High-performance energy and propulsion systems may be developed by improving the autonomy, lifespan, and charging time of batteries.

• Canada Research Chair in Multifunctional Nanomaterials
  Chairholder: Nadi Braidy
  Nanomaterials have amazing properties; by attaching several of them, their strengths can be combined into a new super nanomaterial. To do so, methods of synthesizing hybrid nanomaterials must be developed.

• Canada Research Chair in Biological and Computational Complexity
  Chairholder: Aida Ouangraoua
  Computational biology enables researchers to explore the biological processes involved in controlling gene expression—and therefore the evolution and variability of species and individuals. Models and algorithms that enable biological sequences to be compared and classified must be developed to do so.

• Canada Research Chair in Vibro-Acoustics Applied to the Transportation Sector
  Chairholder: Alain Berry
  With the dual aim of improving the comfort of passengers and reducing environmental noise, the transportation industry is looking for tools to better identify and control noise emitted, particularly by civil aircraft and automobiles.

• Canada Research Chair in Boreal Biogeochemistry
  Chairholder: Jean-Philippe Bellenger (2^nd mandate)
  Climate change will have a great impact on the boreal forest, one of the world’s largest intact terrestrial ecosystem. By understanding the mechanisms that control its functions, appropriate policies may be developed to better manage this precious resource.

• Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology
  Chairholder: Dominique Gravel
  A multitude of interactions between species and the environment are involved in the functioning of ecosystems. However, behind this complexity, there are some simple rules. By reconstructing the networks of interaction between marine fish worldwide, in the present and future, the research program ultimately aims to develop a global model of the functioning of ecosystems.

• Canada Research Chair in Practical Epistemology
  Chairholder: François Claveau
  Various public organizations share knowledge on socio-economic topics. Are they all trustworthy? Epistemology is the study of knowledge, and it is this branch of philosophy that may provide tools for evaluating the characteristics of these organizations in terms of the information that they share—for example, the process of compressing information during expert testimony.

The Université de Sherbrooke has more than 75 research chairs.

Source: Université de Sherbrooke
Photo credit: Archives – UdeS