CPS Professor Marc Laflamme

Supporting Excellence at UTM

Carla DeMarco

This month the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research, has awarded U of T Mississauga researchers 14 grants through the Research and Scholarly Activity Fund (RSAF) and 6 for the Outreach, Conference and Colloquia Fund (OCCF).

"We are always impressed with the calibre of excellent research being done on this campus, and our UTM Research Council was very generous with their time and feedback for adjudicating this year’s crop of proposals," says Bryan Stewart, UTM's Vice-Principal, Research.

"We enthusiastically support our researchers with this funding, and are also happy to highlight the excellent research happening at UTM," says Stewart.

The RSAF awards were made to a diverse range of projects to researchers in various UTM departments, supporting anything from examining the dawn of life from Central Iran (Professor Marc Laflamme, Chemical & Physical Sciences, pictured), to investigating household formation and labour market outcomes in Europe and the US (Professor Sebastian Dyrda, Economics), or developing ways to increase older adults’ online safety (Professor Cosmin Munteanu, Institute of Communication, Information and Technology), and exploring migration, aging and well being for Chinese seniors living in Canada (Professor Weiguo Zhang, Sociology). The funds will go towards a whole host of research-associated expenses including paying for lab material, hiring Research Assistants or helping to support dissemination activities.

The OCCF supports conferences, colloquia and other outreach activities that are mainly held on the UTM campus. There were awards made to faculty members in a range of departments including Biology, Geography, the Institute for Management and Innovation, Language Studies, and Mathematical and Computational Sciences. Additionally, Professor Alessandro Delfanti from ICCIT was awarded funding for his Working Group application.

Both the Research and Scholarly Activity Fund and the Outreach, Conference and Colloquia Fund aim to promote research at U of T Mississauga by assisting researchers with expenses related to scholarly activity and costs associated in communicating findings and networking with colleagues working in the same field. The intention is also to make UTM researchers more competitive in their other grant applications since internal financial sources are increasingly important for securing external funds.

The internal funding competitions are held annually, with the next call for submissions likely to come in early December. For the full results of all past competitions, please see the Research and Scholarly Activity Fund and the Outreach, Conference and Colloquia Fund pages.