New CRC to Focus on Nanoscience, Joins Eight Renewals at UBC Science

Sarah Burke, an expert in nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic materials, has been appointed as a new Canada Research Chair (CRC), joining eight UBC Science CRCs renewed in the latest round of funding.

In total, research at the University of British Columbia received a $20-million boost with the appointment and renewal of 29 CRCs last week.

As CRC in Nanoscience, Burke studies the interaction between light and electrons in nanoscale and organic materials--work that could lead to new technologies in organic electronics and better materials for solar energy conversion.

"A great deal of my research will be focussed on light-matter interactions at the nanoscale," says Burke, cross appointed with the departments of Chemistry and Physics and Astronomy. "There's a lot of great physics to be uncovered. The excitations stimulated by light in nanoscale materials are different than in bulk inorganic materials like silicon. People have been studying these differences, especially with respect to organic and nanoscale photovoltaic materials, but the nanoscale picture of what happens when a photon is absorbed by a nanoscale object and that excitation propagates is still unclear."

The Burke lab will use scanning probe microscopy technologies to image and characterize electronic structure at the nanometre scale.

The team will also use the tools to study materials for organic and nanoscale electronics, including graphene--the focus of this year's Nobel prize in physics. The area promises such fanciful future applications as digital screens what can be can rolled up and tucked under an arm like a newspaper, and artificial skin.

UBC Science CRC Renewals

Marco Ciufolini (Professor, Chemistry) Canada Research Chair in Synthetic Organic Chemistry

Arnaud Doucet (Associate Professor, Computer Science and Statistics)
Canada Research Chair in Stochastic Computation

Joshua Folk (Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy) Canada Research Chair in the Physics of Nanostructures

Steve Hallam (Assistant Professor, Microbiology and Immunology) Canada Research Chair in Environmental Genomics

Wayne Maddison (Professor, Botany and Zoology) Canada Research Chair in Biodiversity and Systematics

Kevin Murphy (Associate Professor, Computer Science and Statistics) Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computational Statistics

Mark Vellend (Assistant Professor, Botany and Zoology) Canada Research Chair in Conservation Biology

Geoff Wasteneys (Professor, Botany)  Canada Research Chair in Plant Cell Biology

Natalie Strynadka, Canada Research Chair in Antibiotic Discovery and Medicine, is also part of UBC's new contingent of CRCs. Strynadka, a professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is working to better understanding the antibiotic resistance of superbugs on the molecular level, work that could lead to new therapeutic tools to fight these notorious bacterial infections.

The 15 new and 14 renewed chairs bring UBC’s total number of CRCs to 190, the second largest complement in the country. The chairs were named last week in Ottawa as part of an announcement of 310 chairs across Canada--totalling $275.6 million--in celebration of the national research program’s 10th anniversary.

"For the past decade, the Canada Research Chairs program has played a instrumental role in ensuring that Canadian universities remain competitive in the recruitment and retention of the brightest minds in the world," says John Hepburn, Vice President Research and International at UBC. "The program's positive impact on the generation of new knowledge--and the knowledge-driven economy--cannot be overstated."