Helium is probably not the first thing that comes to mind for most people when they think about recycling – unless they’re experimental chemists working in McGill’s Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) facilities.

On January 12, the Federal Government announced more than $295 million for science, research, and engineering in Canada through the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) 2020-2 cycle, the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) 2020 Transformation results, and the Tri-agency Scholarships and Fellowships.

Read the full story on the McGill Newsroom or the McGill Reporter.

Below is a list of all CRCs awarded in the 2020-2022 Cycle and McGill Co-PIs and Collaborators NFRF-T 2021-2027:

Scientists have been looking at pollution affecting the air, land and water around the Athabasca Oil Sands for some time. After looking at contaminants in snow taken from up-to 25 km away from the oil sands, a McGill-led scientific team now suggests that oil sand pollution is also affecting the weather patterns in the surrounding regions.

Department members Tara Sprules, manager of the national high-field NMR facility QANUC, and Robin Stein, chemistry department (MC2) NMR/EPR manager, have just had an article published in the CIC newsletter about helium. Together, they use about 2900 L of helium annually to make their eight NMR spectrometers function, and recent cost increases have left them feeling nervous about the future.

Professor Tomislav Friščić is the recipient of the prestigious Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences for his exceptional contributions to Green Chemistry research in Canada. He is the third McGill professor to win the Steacie Prize, and the first ever McGill professor to win it for chemistry. The two previous winners from McGill are Vicky Kaspi, Physics and Astronomy (2006) and Phil Gold, Medicine (1973).

Researchers at McGill University have invented a new technique for measuring how quickly drugs interact with their molecular targets. The discovery provides scientists with a new way to investigate the effectiveness of drug candidates that might otherwise have been overlooked.

The new method centres on the principle of enzyme inhibition. Countless pharmaceuticals, ranging from antibiotics to chemotherapy drugs, work by blocking the action of enzymes, and the search for new enzyme-inhibiting substances remains a major focus of drug development.

McGill University researchers have chemically imprinted polymer particles with DNA strands – a technique that could lead to new materials for applications ranging from biomedicine to the promising field of “soft robotics.”

In a study published in Nature Chemistry, the researchers describe a method to create asymmetrical polymer particles that bind together in a spatially defined manner, the way that atoms come together to make molecules.