The Research Program team works to identify and to
increase the access provincial researchers have to
funding, while encouraging collaborations between
scientists in Ontario, across Canada and internationally.
New Genome Canada Competitions Launched
Two new Genome Canada competitions were launched –
one to support large scale genomics projects with
$60 million funding, and one to support Science and
Technology Innovation Centres with $24 million funding.
Three projects in Ontario were awarded a total of $23.8
million ($11.3 million from Genome Canada, $12.5
million from co-funding) to further knowledge and
discovery in biomonitoring and drug development.
Recognizing the Importance of Societal Impacts
of Research
The OGI Societal Impact of Genomics Prize was launched
in June 2010 to promote and recognize research looking
at the societal issues, outcomes and impacts of
genomics projects. The recipients of the $10,000 prize
were Drs. Abdallah S. Daar and Sarah Ali-Khan from the
McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health for their
research paper on what genetics says about race, with
the aim of encouraging dialogue between researchers,
policy makers and the public to maximize the benefits of
population-based genomics studies.
Building Partnerships
Through its Genomics Capacity Building Workshop
program, OGI supported eight workshops with funding of
up to $10,000 each this year focusing on topics including
mouse phenotyping, autism, genome size and ploidy,
metagenomics, emerging molecular techniques for
microbial community analysis, cystic fibrosis, zebrafish
functional genomics and specialty crops. The aim of the
workshops is to stimulate collaborations to help secure
international funds for large-scale projects.
Successes from Previous Competitions
Technology Development Competition:
Drs. Shana Kelley and Ted Sargent 's chip-based molecular
diagnostics technology that qualifies microRNA expression
levels quickly and accurately, received $1 million for
their start-up company Xagenic.
Dr. Scott Tanner's company, DVS Sciences, has made
several sales of its CyTOF™ mass spectrometry machine.
Drs. Mehrdad Hajibabaei and Paul Hebert's development
of informatics tools to analyze sequence data and
develop new protocols for DNA barcode recovery have
been adopted by Parks Canada and Environment Canada.
Competition 3 (2006–2010): Dr. Peter Singer has gone
on to secure further funding from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation to support his Grand Challenges
Canada Initiative, which is working to improve the health
of people in developing countries through innovation.
