Six Dalhousie researchers will split more than $700,000 through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to improve laboratory infrastructure.
Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, made the announcement today, Wednesday, Dec. 16, at Queen’s University in Kingston. In total, more than $59-million was awarded for 262 projects at 40 research institutions across the country. The investment, made under the CFI’s Leaders Opportunity Fund, will benefit the work of 351 of “the country’s brightest minds,” said Mr. Goodyear.
At Dalhousie, the money will let researchers—with expertise ranging from genetics to genomics—to outfit their laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment.
Psychology professor Shannon Johnson, who researches autism spectrum disorders, will equip her laboratory with the latest technology and integrate it with what she already has. For example, new eye-tracking equipment combined with existing physiological equipment will allow researchers “to put it all together,” explains Dr. Johnson, “examining how children with autism process faces, for example, while recording physical responses at the same time.”
“It will allow us to understand behavior at a fine-grained level,” she adds.
In the Johnson lab, the Clinical and Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab, Dr. Johnson works with several graduate and undergraduate students to understand the differences in social functioning for autistic children, particularly school-aged children. Some of the questions they probe include: Why is it that people with autism spectrum disorders have trouble recognizing faces? Why do they differ in their approach to identifying emotions? How does the body and brain respond when scanning faces?
“One thing we need is more people in this field to get at these kind of questions,” says Dr. Johnson.
LINK: Government of Canada invests in Canadian universities to attract and retain top researchers