The University of Manitoba Annual Report 1998-1999: Notable Research Funding in 1998-99

In 1998-99 the university received over $70 million in external funding for a wide variety of research and special projects. University of Manitoba health researchers were particularly successful in securing funding from the Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC), by achieving a 61 per cent success rate - the highest of all Canadian universities in the September 1998 competition.

Some notable examples of grants received this year are:

Willem Van Oers, physics, received two Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) grants for subatomic physics research. The first grant totalling $340,000 is a two-year award to support the U of M’s particle and nuclear physics research program. The program is based at the Tri-Universities Meson Facility (TRIUMF) in Vancouver, B.C. and the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport, Virginia. Other group members include: James Birchall; Peter Blunden; Willie Falk; Shelley Page; and Juris Svenne, physics. The award provides support for scientific and technical personnel, and the maintenance and servicing of the particle and nuclear physics computer system.

The second grant is a three-year award totalling $279,000 to measure form factors of the proton. Co-investigators include Birchall, Falk and Page, as well as partners from other institutions that form the Canadian team, that have been invited to join in the proton experiment collaboration at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at the Jefferson lab. Their expertise is in performing challenging symmetry violation experiments and they are in a position to make a considerable contribution to this field.