Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has selected Ottawa heart researcher Mona Nemer to be the country’s top scientist. Nemer leaves her position as the vice-president of research at the University of Ottawa after more than a decade to take on the title of Canada’s chief science adviser. The appointment fulfils an election promise and ticks off one of Science Minister Kirsty…
Almost half of Canadians – 43 per cent – believe scientific findings are ‘a matter of opinion,’ a poll released Monday shows. At the same time, 81 per cent said that scientific findings were ‘objective facts,’ which means that over a third of the poll’s respondents, 38 per cent, believe both. Those who described themselves as ‘intuitive/gut feel decision-makers’ were more…
The federal government is spending over $42 million on science and engineering at the University of British Columbia, Canada’s minister of defence announced Friday. Harjit Sajjan, who was speaking on behalf of Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan, said the money is going towards “fundamental” research. The money will be distributed through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s…
When Canada’s scientists and engineers have the opportunity to succeed, they’re able to make the discoveries that lead to ground-breaking innovations, sustainable economic growth and a stronger middle class. The hard work of these researchers also helps new generations of students master the advanced skills they need for the jobs of tomorrow. That is why the Minister of Science, Kirsty…
It’s easy to argue that our brains are our most important resource. One in three Canadians will have to deal with a brain, nervous-system or spinal-cord disorder in their lifetime, according to the Canadian Association for Neuroscience. Our region, and Canada in general, is among the global leaders studying neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease,…
With Canada’s 150th birthday squarely in the rear-view mirror, we should now look to our future. Our government has been staking much on an “innovation economy” – if the regular speeches by various ministries are anything to go by. So how do we get there? Follow the government’s own evidence and part of the answer is clear: invest in research.…
In March, Canada’s federal government announced its 2017 budget with no increase in funding for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the organization that provides the vast majority of biomedical research funding to labs in Canada. This was a devastating blow to the Canadian research laboratories that have suffered a decade-long decline in funding under the previous Conservative government.…
It was something like a flashback for Canadian scientists who gathered across the country Saturday to rally in support of their American counterparts, who say they’re facing mounting attacks against science. Science advocate Katie Gibbs said she felt like she was returning a favour. Nearly five years ago, she was in the same place, doing almost the same thing. In…
In Steven Soderbergh’s classy television show The Knick, set in a New York City hospital in the early 1900s, competitive and obsessively driven surgeon-scientists work on the burning medical issues of the day — identification of blood groups to allow blood transfusions, for example, and facial reconstruction surgery that returns dignity to those disfigured by syphilis. Would-be healers have been testing surgical…
Last week, I received an email from my PhD alma mater UBC and instead of a request for donations or an invitation to an event with the expectation of soliciting a donation later, I was treated to a new dataset emerging from the west coast. UBC has collated responses from its PhD graduates between 2005 and 2013 (myself included!) into…