StFX makes Canada’s Top 50

StFX experienced an impressive 20.2 per cent increase in research income and was one of five of Nova Scotia’s 11 universities to make the cut for Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities List, released in October 2008 by Research Infosource Inc. 

StFX grad student presents paper at international conference in Milan

StFX grad student Fahim Imam will be in Milan, Italy Sept. 1 to present a paper co-authored with faculty advisor Dr. Wendy MacCaull on integrating healthcare ontologies at the 6th International Conference on Business Process Management.

Fahim, who recently completed a master’s degree in computer science under Dr. MacCaull’s supervision, won StFX’s Best Graduate Thesis Award 2008. His research topic, ‘Merging Ontologies – an Inconsistency Tolerant Approach,’ is one of the major problems facing the organization of knowledge today.

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StFX’s Bill Marshall, Charmaine McPherson named to NSHRF committee

StFX will now have two representatives on the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation (NSHRF) Research Advisory Committee.

Dean of Science Dr. Bill Marshall and School of Nursing faculty member Dr. Charmaine McPherson have both been appointed to the committee for a three-year term, effective May 1 2008 through April 2011. The committee provides advice and recommendations to NSHRF on research and peer review and merit review issues.

Committee members are selected to provide broad representation of health research sectors and across health research organizations.

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StFX, University of Regina, and HTC Purenergy Collaborating to Combat Global Warming

ANTIGONISH, NS – Canadian universities, researchers and industry partners are continuing to lead the world in finding safe solutions to combating global warming.

St. Francis Xavier University, the University of Regina, and HTC Purenergy Inc. (HTC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will see innovative “measurement -monitoring - verification” (’MMV’) technologies developed by StFX’s Dr. David Risk in Antigonish, NS to be deployed and tested at the Weyburn - Midale carbon capture and sequestration project in Saskatchewan.

This project is the world’s first and largest field demonstration of geological storage under the overall management of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC). The University of Regina is undertaking a significant research and technology innovation partnership role
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Environmental Sciences Research Centre receives CFCAS award for study of the future stability of permafrost

A team of five researchers in StFX’s Environmental Sciences Research Centre (ESRC) have been awarded $166,000 from the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) to examine the stability of permafrost, or areas of permanently frozen ground, in the Arctic under a range of greenhouse emission scenarios.

This work will consist of the integration of the Atmosphere – Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCM) ECHO-g with the regional models MM5 and WRF.

“The fate of permafrost in the Arctic is an increasingly important issue due to ongoing climate change,” says Dr. Grant Ferguson, one of the researchers involved.
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StFX student a Rising Star of Research

The country’s top undergraduate science and technology students will gather at UBC in Vancouver Aug. 21-23 to participate in Canada’s Rising Stars of Research (RSR) conference. StFX student Emma MacDonald will be among them.

The Antigonish, NS native who is entering her fourth year in the B.Sc honours program in psychology will present the results of her NSERC and StFX-funded Undergraduate Science Research Award (USRA) during the national undergraduate science research poster competition.

“I’m very excited,” says MacDonald, 21. “It’s a good chance to meet other student researchers and see what they are doing, to gain presentation experience, to network, and to see other academic institutes as we will tour UBC, Simon Fraser and the University of Victoria.”

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