IMSC iDesign / iFactory

University of Windsor DailyNews - July 28, 2011

Provincial investment to fund job-creating research

UWindsor researchers will develop new product ideas, find ways to create a new generation of smart materials and even train new historians to study how Canada’s colonization influenced development in other parts of the world, thanks to funding from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.

Dwight Duncan, Minister of Finance and Windsor-St. Clair MPP, was on campus Wednesday to announce support to three UWindsor researchers as part of the province’s strategy to make innovation a driving force of economic growth.

“We’re proud of the exceptional work our Windsor researchers do,” Duncan said. “Their contributions are making the world a better place, starting right here with new ideas and jobs in our community.”

Monies were announced for:

• Hoda ElMaraghy, a Canada Research Chair and director of the University’s Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Centre. Dr. ElMaraghy is establishing a new Innovation Design Studio and Transformable Manufacturing System. The first of its kind in North America, the system will be housed in the $112 million Centre for Engineering Innovation. It will allow faculty members and students to develop product ideas from conceptualization to prototyping, design virtual assembly systems, and then build their product in a real-world, truly reconfigurable factory in the laboratory. The project received an investment of almost $400,000.
• Jeremy Rawson, a Canada Research Chair and professor in chemistry and biochemistry. Dr. Rawson studies the behaviour of sulphur and nitrogen-based solid compounds as they respond to heat, light and pressure, with an eye towards creating ‘smart’ materials to be used in such electronic devices as medical diagnostic equipment, lightweight generators or high-tech aeronautical applications. The demand for lightweight, high-performance sensors and devices requires the development of a new generation of materials whose physical response can be tailored at the molecular level. The Centre for Molecular Magnetic Materials Research received about $180,000 in infrastructure funding. Faculty, students and officials were on hand for the announcement in the industrial courtyard of the Centre for Engineering Innovation. UWindsor President Alan Wildeman called it an appropriate setting for a discussion of the University’s role in fostering opportunity.

  “The University of Windsor is very grateful for the Government of Ontario’s continuing commitment to investing in research, discovery and innovation,” he said. “Research and its resulting economic impacts are vital to ensuring the brightest future possible.”

  
   
   
• Robert Nelson, a history professor and recipient of the Humboldt Research Fellowship. Dr. Nelson studies how large countries like Canada colonized their inner frontiers, and how other countries such as Germany borrowed and adapted those methods. Nelson’s funding comes in the form of a $150,000 Early Researcher Award, which allows researchers to train highly qualified personnel. Nelson will bring on a new team of graduate students to study how countries like Russia and Argentina looked to other countries to colonize their own inner frontiers between 1870 and 1945.
   

Engineering researcher Hoda ElMaraghy expresses thanks to Ontario finance minister Dwight Duncan for an investment in the iDesign Studio, Wednesday in the industrial courtyard of the Centre for Engineering Innovation
 

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