NSERC announces 2010 Synergy Awards

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) has announced the winners of this year's Synergy Awards for Innovation, given to exemplary university-industry collaboration. Each university researcher receives a $200,000 research grant while participating companies can hire an NSERC Industrial R&D Fellow for two years with NSERC picking up the company portion of the salary. This year's award winners are: Ahmet Alpas (Univ of Windsor) and General Motors Canada Ltd for R&D relating to lightweight materials for automotive products and manufacturing processes; Brahim Benmokrane (Univ of Sherbrooke) and Pultrall Inc, for the development of carbon fibre composites for reinforcing concrete structures; Donald Mavinic (Univ of British Columbia) for developing an efficient phosphorus recovery technology. Industrial partners are Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc, Stantec Consulting Ltd, Metro Vancouver, EPCOR Water Service Inc and Clean Water Services Ltd; and, Roderick Guthrie and Mihaiela Isac (McGill Univ) and company members of the McGill Metals Processing Centre for advances in the processing of liquid and solid metals. This collaboration received the Leo Derikx Award....