Made in Manitoba research

Distinguished Professor Dr. Charles Bernstein is recipient of the 2016 Dr. John M. Bowman Memorial Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation Award. Established in 1997, this award is given to an established University of Manitoba faculty member in recognition of outstanding research accomplishments. Dr. Bernstein will share his thoughts on his research and its implications at the Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation awards ceremony, lecture and reception on Thursday, April 6, 2017.

Bernstein’s lecture: “Made in Manitoba Research: Advancing our understanding of inflammatory bowel disease,” will take place at 7 p.m. in the Robert B. Schultz Lecture Theatre, St. John’s College, 92 Dysart Road.

All are welcome and admission is free. A reception celebrating all 2016 Rh award winners will follow the lecture.

The 2016 Terry G. Falconer Memorial Rh Institute Foundation Emerging Researcher Awards were originally established in 1973 by the Winnipeg Rh Institute, now the Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation, from funds set aside from the sale and production of medical formulae. The awards were renamed in 2016 in memory of Terry Falconer, former chair of the Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation. These honours are given to academic staff members who are in the early stages of their careers and who display exceptional innovation, leadership and promise in their respective fields. The winners each receive $12,000 toward their research program. Typically, one award is given in each of the following areas: applied sciences, creative works, health sciences, humanities, interdisciplinary studies, natural sciences and social sciences.

APPLIED SCIENCES 

Puyan Mojabi.

Puyan Mojabi (electrical and computer engineering) advances the development of electromagnetic inversion, a process in which internal properties of a domain of interest are found from external electromagnetic field observations. Mojabi’s current research focus is on innovations in microwave imaging, Arctic microwave remote sensing, and antenna characterization and design. This research has broad applications in many fields such as: medicine (breast tissue imaging); geophysics (oil exploration); Arctic remote sensing (snow and sea ice thickness); antenna design, measurement and diagnostics; agriculture (grain bin imaging); environmental engineering (soil moisture); and industrial non-destructive evaluation.

HEALTH SCIENCES

Ji Hyun Ko.

Ji Hyun Ko (human anatomy and cell science) uses engineering and mathematical approaches to design new ways of looking at how the brain works. He seeks to find a better understanding of brain abnormalities in neurological and psychiatric disorders, using the development of functional brain imaging methods such as MRI and PET. He is developing imaging-based biomarkers and imaging-guided brain stimulation therapies for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorders and traumatic brain injuries. His research allows for better diagnosis and prognosis, and to monitor disease progression and treatment responses more accurately. 

Kathryn Sibley.

Kathryn Sibley (community health sciences) studies the process of knowledge translation in rehabilitation sciences, a specialized area of health care dedicated to optimizing physical function and quality of life. Using an integrated knowledge translation research approach, where the end-users of rehabilitation research are involved in the research process from start to finish, her studies identify critical rehabilitation research-to-practice gaps and test methods to close them; promote more consistent research practices to ensure rehabilitation treatments can be accurately compared across studies; and develop new research communication strategies. She was recently awarded a Canada Research Chair in Integrated Knowledge Translation in Rehabilitation Science. 

HUMANITIES

Etienne-Marie Lassi.

Etienne-Marie Lassi (French, Spanish and Italian) conducts research that focuses on the way ordinary people experience life, relate to their social and geographical environment as well as to other peoples and cultures by studying imagined realities such as legends, novels, plays, and films through which social imaginaries are expressed. His research and teaching interests include Francophone African literature and cinema, film adaptation and novelization, postcolonial theories, and environment in literature and film. The notion of identity, of how people view themselves, is central to his research. 

INTERDISCIPLINARY

Neil Bruce.

Neil Bruce (computer science) investigates vision from a computational perspective. Understanding how people view, sample, and process information is critical to many application domains including interface design, marketing, medical diagnosis and in everyday life. His research involves the use of artificial intelligence for computer vision systems, and the application of computational methods and serves as a hub, connecting a variety of disciplines including computer science, neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, imaging and statistics. Bruce provides solutions to important problems in computer vision such as object recognition, scene understanding, and foremost, mechanisms to focus attention or processing on certain parts of an image to deal with the complexity of vision problems.

NATURAL SCIENCES

Juliette Mammei.

Juliette Mammei (physics and astronomy) studies the most fundamental properties of matter. She uses high energy polarized electron beams to measure various nuclear and nucleon properties, and even to search for new forces that have never been discovered. The most exciting aspect of her research is to use this method of scattering electrons to measure the weak nuclear charges of protons and electrons so precisely that deviations from the theoretical predictions will indicate the existence of new fundamental forces that have never been seen before. This new forces may be responsible for unexplained phenomena such as why we live in a matter universe instead of an antimatter one, and what dark energy and dark matter are.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Chad Lawley.

Chad Lawley (agribusiness and agricultural economics) studies the economics of environmental and agricultural policy issues, including pre-emptive invasive species trade measures, land use and habitat conservation in agricultural landscapes, and supply management of the Canadian dairy and poultry industries. His most recent research has explored issues of farmland ownership, including the implications of farmland tenure for adoption of conservation practices and the impact of farmland ownership restrictions on farmland prices. Chad has recently completed two projects examining the effects of BC’s carbon tax on fuel use by BC households.

UM Today Staff