Research News 
Queen’s Receives Canada Excellence Research Chair in Impact of Radiation in Energy and Advanced Technologies
World-renowned nuclear materials scientist, Yanwen Zhang will join Queen’s as a new Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in June 2024. For her research, Dr. Zhang will receive $8 million over the next eight years to lead outstanding research in the impact of radiation in energy and advanced technologies. The CERC program funds 34 new CERCs at 18 post-secondary institutions across the country, with a goal to grow leading edge breakthroughs in science, technology and innovation, and to generate social and economic benefits in Canada and globally.
Dr. Zhang is an acknowledged expert on extreme material conditions, and with the demand for nuclear-energy growing, her research program will predict structural degradation with an aim to enable safer and longer-lasting facilities. Dr. Zhang’s research will enhance the work already being done by the Reactor Materials Testing Laboratory and the interdisciplinary Nuclear Reactors Group at Queen’s.
Learn more about Queen's Research Chair
Over $40 million in Funding Awarded to Research at Queen’s
To support research and innovation in Canada, the Government of Canada invested $40.3 million to ignite research and it applications at Queen’s. Funds were distributed through the Canada Research Chairs program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) Innovation Fund grant, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to expand on research strengths at the University. The Canada Research Chairs program supports research and development through talent attraction and retention, and two prestigious Tier 2 Chairs were awarded to Drs. Eva Kaufmann (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences) and Kyla Tienhaara (Environmental Studies) to advance research in immunology and inflammation and the economy and environment, respectively. Through the CFI fund, Queen’s received $18 million to increase significant projects in translational medicine, nuclear energy and environmental sciences. More specifically, Drs. Lynne-Marie Postovit (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences) and Stephen Archer (Medicine) will establish the TIME Core project, Dr. Mark Daymond will initiate the extension of the Reactor Materials Testing Laboratory, and Dr. Stephen Lougheed will develop the ECCO-Ontario project to monitor aquatic environments. Additionally, 21 researchers received NSERC Alliance Grants to fund strong collaborative projects to generate new knowledge and found research applications that benefit Canada, and 18 social sciences and humanities researchers were awarded Insight Development Grants from SSHRC to develop new research question, methods, theoretical approaches and ideas.
Learn more about significant federal funding for Queen's
Celebrating Research Excellence at Queen’s
On March 5, 2024, the Vice-Principal Research Portfolio (VPR) hosted a celebration to honour researchers who have recently received major international, national and provincial prizes for their exceptional contributions to research between 2021 and 2023. The event, Applause: A Celebration of Research Excellence took place at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in Kingston and honoured excellence in research and knowledge mobilization together with research staff, colleagues, family, and friends.
The event’s formal program started with opening remarks from Vice-Principal Research Dr. Nancy Ross and Principal and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Patrick Deane, and recognized award impact through presentations with award-winning researchers Drs. Cathleen Crudden, John Smol and Praveen Jain. Following the formal program, awardees joined a reception with members of the research community and their family and friends.
Learn more about this event, Applause: A Celebration of Research Excellence
Prize for Excellence in Research Recipients Announced
We are pleased to celebrate Dr. Alyson Mahar (Nursing), Dr. Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh (Chemistry) and Dr. Ali Etemad (Electrical Computing and Engineering) as the newest recipients of the Prize for Excellence in Research for Outstanding Emerging Researchers. Awarded annually to three faculty members, the prize recognizes and celebrates outstanding early career researchers at Queen’s. Researchers are nominated by their Faculties, in any of the fields or disciplines in which research is carried out at Queen's, and awardees are honoured with cash prize valued at $5,000 and at a Spring convocation ceremony.
This year’s recipients are:
Alyson Mahar
Dr. Mahar is an exceptional emerging epidemiologist and health services researcher in the School of Nursing, leading landmark studies focused on the inequitable delivery of healthcare. Partnering with patients and communities, Dr. Mahar’s team applies cutting edge, inclusive approaches to data and research design to understand complex intersections among the social determinants of health, people’s identities, and the policies and systems we live in, from disease risk to mortality. Her interdisciplinary team, led by undergraduate, graduate, and health professional trainees, contributes impactful evidence in understudied areas of cancer care, mental health, and the defence sector.
Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh
Dr. Heidar-Zadeh completed her dual-PhD in Theoretical Chemistry (McMaster University, Canada) and Physics (Ghent University, Belgium) for which she was awarded the Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2017. She was then hosted as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Luxembourg, an FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Molecular Modeling of Ghent University, and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on developing new mathematical tools, numerical algorithms, and computer software to qualitatively and quantitatively predict the outcome of chemical phenomena using strategies from quantum chemistry and machine learning. She leads the development of various software packages for computational sciences as part of QC-Devs International Software Consortium. She joined the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University as a tenure-track assistant professor in January 2020 and received the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Chemistry in 2022 and was recognized as a Cottrell Scholar in 2024.
Ali Etemad
Dr. Etemad is an Associate Professor and a Mitchell Professor in AI for Human Sensing and Understanding. His internationally recognized research program continues to push the state of the art in novel artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms for analyzing and interpreting human-focused data such as video, audio, and signals from wearable devices. The overarching objective of Dr. Etemad’s work is to understand human behaviour, identify, health, and emotional states with the goal of improving user experience, health outcomes, and overall quality of life.
View the awardees on our Prize for Excellence webpage
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