Professor Vincent Kuuire
Professor Vincent Kuuire
Photo by Blake Eligh

A new year brings new funds

Carla DeMarco
car.demarco@utoronto.ca
Main News

Professor Vincent Kuuire from the Department of Geography is one of 11 emerging scholars at UTM who has received funding from the Research and Scholarly Activity Fund (RSAF) from the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research (OVPR). The funds will support his project, "Understanding the occurrence of infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases in rapidly evolving urban environments."

"Populations in developing countries have historically been burdened by infectious diseases due to socioeconomic conditions such as extreme poverty, but also growing wealth and lifestyle related to non-communicable diseases has become a concern in recent years," says Kuuire.

"Therefore, one of the objectives of this project is to investigate the varying contexts of infectious and also non-communicable diseases in neighbourhoods in Tamale, one of the fastest growing urban areas in West Africa," says Kuuire, who will use the funding he received to conduct surveys in Ghana this coming summer and to pay research assistants to help with data collection, entry and analysis. To read more about Kuuire's work see "From Ghana to the GTA."

Overall, 20 faculty members are benefiting from RSAF support, as well as four faculty members who have been awarded funds through the Outreach, Conference and Colloquia Fund (OCCF), which supports the organization of conferences and other outreach activities to enhance UTM's research profile locally, nationally and internationally.

Ultimately, the funds are also intended to help make UTM researchers' applications more competitive in funding programs run by Canada's Tri-Agency: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

"For the RSAF competition we received 35 applications, and we were happy to be able to support so many researchers, with more than half of the funding going towards early-stage research and junior faculty members who are just embarking on their academic careers," says Professor Bryan Stewart, Vice-Principal, Research.

"Once again our UTM Research Council members, who adjudicated the applications, were incredibly impressed by the range and quality of research being undertaken by our UTM colleagues in all disciplines."

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