Four leading researchers awarded Canada Research Chairs

by Maria Lironi & Valerie Shore

Crystal growth, emerging optical technologies, the secrets of the ocean, and how proteins interact with sugars will be explored in depth by UVic’s four newest Canada Research Chairs, announced this week.

The federal program will create 2,000 chairs by 2005 in an effort to attract and retain top university researchers at Canadian universities. The addition of four new chairs brings UVic’s total to 13.

The renewable award comes in two tiers. Tier-one chairs are considered the “stars of today” and provide the researcher with $200,000 for seven years. They can be renewed indefinitely. Tier-two recipients are considered the “stars of tomorrow” and their awards provide each researcher with $100,000 annually over five years, renewable once.

UVic’s new tier-one recipients are Drs. Ted Darcie, Sadik Dost and Verena Tunnicliffe.

Darcie’s ground-breaking work in analog lightwave systems has helped transform the cable television industry. As the Canada Research Chair in Optical Systems for Communications, Imaging and Sensing, Darcie will focus on the novel application of emerging optical technologies and transmission techniques.

“I’m really looking forward to exploring new ways of combining different optical signals in optical integrated circuits, with the hope of making short distance transmission systems less expensive,” says Darcie, who is currently the director of innovative network technologies at AT&T labs in New Jersey.

There are many applications for optical circuits in telephone and cable television networks, areas where fibre optics currently doesn’t come into play. As new technologies are introduced, fibre can be extended closer to customers, resulting in higher data speeds, lower costs and better reliability.

“I’m also looking forward to exploring things that interest me and are potentially useful, even though their use might not yet be obvious,” adds Darcie. “A university setting provides the opportunity to explore such things, a freedom that is becoming increasingly rare in corporate research labs.”

Dost, currently the chair of UVic’s mechanical engineering department, has been studying crystal growth since 1989. As the Canada Research Chair in Semiconductor Crystal Growth, Dost will focus on developing high-quality alloy semiconducting bulk single crystals.

Semiconductors refers to materials used as a base for opto-electronic and electronic devices. “All electronic devices need some kind of semiconductor single crystal substrate,” Dost explains. “For example, computers use silicon substrates as semiconductors.”

Dost is interested in growing materials that would be used as semiconductors in devices such as blue lasers, nuclear medical imaging, and x-ray instruments. Materials that will be used for medical imaging will work at room temperatures, and won’t need cooling systems. As a result they’ll be small, so little in fact that even tiny offices can use them. They’ll also require less maintenance.

Almost all Canadian companies that grow bulk crystals are located in Victoria. The growth technique that interests Dost is called liquid phase electroepitaxy. “In this technique we’re ahead of almost everyone at the moment,” says Dost.

“The rest have given up because of the difficulties of this technique and the fact that the growth rate is small—only about half a millimetre a day. But the UVic team has increased that rate by about 20 times, which will make this technique commercially viable.”

As holder of the Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research, Tunnicliffe (biology/earth and ocean sciences), will expand her work on the biodiversity of deep sea ecosystems and spearhead a major new project on water column, seafloor and sub-seafloor phenomena along the southern B.C. coast.

Tunnicliffe is a leading authority on deep-sea life, especially the strange ecosystems that develop near hydrothermal vents at mid-ocean ridges. She’s the author of 78 articles on marine science, and her many honours include the Science Council of B.C.’s New Frontiers in Research award (1999), a Steacie Prize from the National Research Council (1993), and election to the Royal Society of Canada (1992).

Much of Tunnicliffe’s time in the coming years will be taken up as project director of the Victoria Experimental Network UnderSea (VENUS) real-time ocean observation system, which was awarded more than $4 million in funding earlier this year from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. The underwater network of fibre-optic cable will provide scientists and the public with continuous biological, oceanographic and geological data from three locations—Saanich Inlet, the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Race Rocks.

“I’m very interested in bringing inshore a lot of the research we’ve been doing offshore, and through VENUS we can do that,” says Tunnicliffe. “As an integrated, online observatory, VENUS will allow us to track water column, seafloor and subsurface events as they happen, and assess subsequent changes in diversity.”

Dr. Alisdair Boraston, awarded a tier-two Canada Research Chair in Molecular Interactions, is currently doing postdoctoral studies at the University of York in England. He’ll join UVic’s department of biochemistry and microbiology on Jan. 1, 2003.

Boraston, who was raised in Victoria and earned his BSc and PhD at UBC, studies how proteins interact with sugars—information critical to our understanding of processes such as microbial infection, recycling of plant carbohydrates, cell development, carcinogenesis, immune response and reproduction.

“I do this at two levels,” he explains. “The fundamental level deals with what factors are important in making a protein and sugar stick together. The practical level deals with how we can manipulate this to our benefit—new ways to treat infections, improved enzymes for the food and textile industries, or better methods for alternative fuel production.”

Most recently, Boraston has focused on how microbial enzymes interact with cellulose and other plant sugars.

“My initial research at UVic will continue along those lines.” he says, “but very quickly I intend to include studies of how carbohydrate-binding proteins play a role in bacterial infections,” His work will have relevance for such conditions as tuberculosis, cholera, and food poisoning.

UVic is expected to be awarded 21 more Canada Research Chairs over the next three years. For more information on the program visit <www.chairs.gc.ca>.

(Photo credits: Joy Poliquin [Dost], Valerie Shore [Tunnicliffe], Shirley Roberts [Boraston])