UBC Faculty of Medicine researchers have been awarded more than $6 million in federal funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants program.
A total of 157 new programs and projects led by UBC researchers were awarded more than $36.2 million through the 2024 NSERC Discovery Research Program competition.
The awards were announced by Yasir Naqvi, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, and Ryan Turnbull, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, on behalf of the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, as part of the Government of Canada’s investment of $693.8 million in funding for discovery and applied research.
Faculty of Medicine recipients:
DISCOVERY GRANTS
The NSERC Discovery Grants program supports ongoing programs of research with long-term goals rather than a single short-term project or collection of projects. These grants recognize the creativity and innovation that are at the heart of all research advances.
Discovery Launch Supplements provide timely resources to support early career researchers (ECRs) as they establish a Discovery Grant-funded research program. Projects marked with * below were awarded an additional $12,500 each for one year through the Discovery Launch Supplements program.
- Mark Cembrowski, Cellular and Physiological Sciences
Subtype-specific neuronal processing within the deep neocortex - Artem Cherkasov, Urologic Sciences
D5 Research Platform: Democratizing Drug Discovery with Deep Docking - Jessica Dennis, Medical Genetics
Genomics of longitudinal traits* - Adele Diamond, Psychiatry
Improving Executive Functions - Faraz Hach, Urologic Sciences
Empowering Genomics and Transcriptomics: A Toolkit for Single-Molecule and Single-Cell Sequencing Technologies - Brett Hilton, Cellular and Physiological Sciences
The role of the presynaptic active zone in axon growth during neuronal maturation* - LeAnn Howe, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Novel Functions of Histone Acetylation - Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Novel Biomaterials Design Concepts in the Development of Immunomodulating Materials and Bioactive Surfaces - Tim Lee, Dermatology and Skin Science
Coherence- and polarization-based detection of melanoma - Louis Lefebvre, Medical Genetics
Genomic imprinting at the Mest cluster: mechanism and function - Manu Madhav, School of Biomedical Engineering
An engineering approach to model flexible neural representations that enable biological navigation* - Tim O’Connor, Cellular and Physiological Sciences
Continued expression of developmental guidance cues is critical for the maintenance of neural circuits - Elizabeth Rideout, Cellular and Physiological Sciences
Mechanisms and consequences of an interaction between sex determination gene transformer and metabolic regulator spargel - Stacey Skoretz, Audiology and Speech Sciences
The mammalian aerodigestive tract: Exploring multi-system mechanistic integration during breathing and swallowing* - Miriam Spering, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences
Sensorimotor prediction in dynamic visual scenes - Sriram Subramaniam, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
On-Grid Purification of Biomolecules for Electron Microscopy - Roger Tam, School of Biomedical Engineering
Beyond the confusion matrix: A framework to compare neural network representations trained on biomedical data - Guy Tanentzapf, Cellular and Physiological Sciences
Regulation of spermatogenesis by gap-junction mediated signalling. - Stefan Taubert, Medical Genetics
Mapping new starvation response mechanisms in Caenorhabditis elegans - Bruce Vallance, Pediatrics
Using fasting to reveal critical microbiota-host interactions at the colonic mucosal surface - Ying Wang, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Cell-cell and cell-microenvironment interactions maintain tissue homeostasis of the cardiovascular system.* - Wyeth Wasserman, Medical Genetics
Bioinformatics for Prediction of Transcriptional Regulation Mechanisms - Alexander Weber, Pediatrics
Mapping the Structural and Functional Development of the Brain in the First Year of Life: A State-of-the-Art Quantitative MRI Approach* - Calvin Yip, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Structural and functional studies of mammalian intracellular transport regulators
DISCOVERY HORIZONS GRANT PROGRAM
Discovery Horizons grants support investigator-initiated individual and team projects that broadly integrate or transcend disciplines to advance knowledge in the natural sciences and engineering.
- Calum MacAulay, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Angular contrast multimodal optical imaging for lung cancer assessment