NSERC awards Discovery Grants funding to eight McGill Agricultural and Environmental Sciences projects

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) has awarded 101 McGill research projects funding from its Discovery Grants competition for a total investment of $23.5 million, including $639,500 for eight projects submitted by researchers in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

The Discovery Grants support ongoing programs with long-term goals, recognizing the creativity and innovation that are at the heart of all research advances.

The funding was announced June 14 as part of a suite of investments in discovery and applied research totaling $693.8 million.

Projects funded in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

• Identification of environmental and genetic factors affecting the colonization of water systems by Legionella pneumophila (Grant holder: Sebastien Faucher)
• The mechanics of photosynthesis (Grant holder: Anja Geitmann)
• Tabletop scanning electron microscope for the study of biomaterials (Grant holder: Anja Geitmann)
• Novel chemical tracer approaches to advance global change ecology and ecotoxicology (Grant holder: Melissa McKinney)
• Single-cell sorting instrument to further microbiome insights (Grant holder: Jennifer Ronholm)
• Regulation of editosome proteins in trypanosome differentiation (Grant holder: Reza Salavati)
• Extracellular vesicles in helminth-host communication: negotiators using a molecular language (Grant holder: Lucienne Tritten)
• Biologically-assisted nutrient uptake model for agricultural crops (Grant holder: Joann Whalen)

For more details and a list of McGill’s Discovery Research Program recipients, consult the database of awardees.