Research Grants in the School of Information Studies

Recipients are Professors Kimiz Dalkir, Jamshid Beheshti, Catherine Guastavino and Joan Bartlett.

Professors Kimiz Dalkir and Jamshid Beheshti received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada ($36 000) to develop a theoretical model for knowledge management in higher education particularly in relation to sharing and preserving critical know-how. Professor Catherine Guastavino is co-investigator on a collaborative research grant awarded by the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) with Professor Fujinaga (Faculty of Music, McGill University) as principal investigator. The grant of $59, 454 will be used to study how to best preserve and archive Quebec’s heritage musical recordings that were made on a variety of technical supports over a century. The interdisciplinary project aims at investigating audio quality, from a technical and perceptual point of view, in the context of digitization. Professor Guastavino is also co-investigator on a project funded by the National Sciences and Research Council of Canada, the Consortium for Research and Innovation in Aerospace in Quebec, and CAE and Bombardier corporations, and conducted in collaboration with the University of Sherbrooke. The funds ($891 000) will be used to develop and implement methods to build an acoustic simulator to emulate the acoustic environment of aircraft cabins and cockpits. Sound reproduction in cockpit simulators and cabin mock-ups is considered an essential component in a virtual environment that adds ambience, emotion, and enhance the sense of presence to the simulation for pilot training. The research will provide a program of systematic evaluation of human responses within a virtual environment. In addition, Professor Guastavino, in collaboration with 22 researchers of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill University, was instrumental in obtaining a very competitive grant of $1,8 M awarded by FQRSC and the Fonds de recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT). The grant will provide subsidies to CIRMMT for six years to support its research initiatives.

Professor Joan Bartlett is co-investigator on a collaborative research grant awarded by the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada ($101,654) with Professor Martin Dawes (Family Medicine, McGill University) as principal investigator and co-investigators from McGill, McMaster and the Universite de Montreal. The grant will be used to study refining access to health information using a novel indexing approach.