Daily News

Posted on March 8: Research gets major boost

McMaster researchers are celebrating a new era of discovery with the award of $16.3 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for six major research initiatives. The funding will enable McMaster researchers to acquire state-of-the art instruments to lead further research in the areas of nanotechnology, functional genomics, radiation biology, natural and synthetic polymers, digital cinema and high-performance computing. "Our researchers continue to have great success in a highly competitive process," said Mamdouh Shoukri, vice president research & international affairs. "The research we're doing at McMaster is leading edge and will contribute, for example, to a better understanding of how diverse materials are constructed and operate at super small levels, how genes function in cancer and infectious diseases and the effects of low-dose radiation. Funding for the computational science project known as SHARCNET is support for a fundamental science that will help researchers in several areas. "In all of these endeavours our researchers are either leading or establishing the first facilities of their kind in Canada. They are focused on world-class research leading to new discoveries, technologies, cures and treatments in the areas of molecular biology, manufacturing and materials and information technology. This CFI support is integral to our ability to forge new paths in these areas." To date, McMaster has received $89 million from CFI to support research activity, which will generate or translate into more than $200 million in funding for research projects at the University.

Posted on March 5: New academic director hopes to inspire passion for teaching

Del Harnish, the new academic director of McMaster's Centre for Leadership in Learning (CLL), has a lot on his mind these days. Not only is he leading one of McMaster's most premier programs the Bachelor of Health Sciences program -- he's been asked to bring teaching to the forefront of researchers' minds. It's a hefty task. After all, teaching isn't why most researchers entered their profession, he says. "The culture in most faculties is that faculty members do not meet to talk about their teaching. In fact, if you were to walk down the hall and ask a faculty member what's new, it almost never will be a topic about teaching, it will be something in their research." That's why CLL is so important, he says. It emphasizes teaching excellence; an objective he says is shared across campus. So, when Harnish was asked to take on the position of academic director of CLL, he knew he was being charged with an important job. "Teaching has become a more central issue for the institution over the past five years, and that's clear in things like tenure and promotion committees, and it's a clear focus of Refining Directions," says Harnish, who took over the three-and-a-half-year appointment in January. "It's largely true that all people who teach on campus want to do it really well, but by definition, their discipline is not teaching and they don't necessarily read educational literature, because they are engrossed in their research."