Congratulations to all Martha Piper Research Fund applicants.
I am pleased to announce the recipients of the tenth and final cycle of the Martha Piper Research Fund competition.
Consistent with UBC’s commitments to Research Excellence and International Engagement outlined in Place & Promise, the Martha Piper Research Fund provides seed funding to establish and advance collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects involving UBC faculty members and international partners. This five-year program was established in 2007 and has awarded $250,000 per year in semi-annual competitions.
The October 2011 competition received a total of 45 applications across a broad range of disciplines. This is twice the number of applications received in the March competition, reflecting a truly extraordinary level of participation and international engagement across the entire UBC system.
Each proposal received three independent reviews by a committee of at least 10 faculty members from both campuses and a variety of disciplines. This Fall, a budget surplus allowed the Committee to award funding of up to $25,000 each to the top six proposals. As in previous competitions, it was extremely challenging to determine the top proposals from the consistently high quality of applications.
I thank the adjudication committee for their efforts to review and evaluate the many applications received in this competition. On their behalf, I congratulate the winners and wish them well in their research. I also thank all faculty members who took the time and effort to prepare an application for this competition. A review is planned to evaluate the impact of this program over the past five years, the results of which will be posted to this website.
For my part, I am very impressed with the variety and quality of the interdisciplinary applications committed, and especially with the strong climate of international engagement they reflect. It is through competitions such as the Martha Piper Research Fund that UBC has an opportunity to demonstrate its significance as one of the world’s leading research universities.
Best wishes,
Helen M. Burt, PhD
Associate Vice President, Research & International
| Competition | Awardee | Submission |
| Fall 2011 | Alexandre Bouchard, Statistics | Joint inference of phylogeny and mutation locations in cancer cell populations |
| Stephanie Chang, School of Community & Regional Planning | Learning from Christchurch: Technical Decisions and Societal Consequences in Post-Earthquake Recovery | |
| Aleksandra Dulic, Creative and Critical Studies UBC-Okanagan | The Order of the Passions - Polyphonic culture in Canada | |
| Diane Srivastava, Zoology | An integrated approach to understanding climate change impacts on a tropical ecosystem |
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| Thomas Tannert, Wood Science & Civil Engineering |
Sustainable Disaster Relief Housing | |
| Todd Woodward, Psychiatry | The Functional Connectome: Hallucinations |
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| Spring 2011 | Calum MacAulay, Dept. of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Selective Excitation Light Fluorescence (SELF) and Gynecological Malignancies |
| Roger François, Dept. of Earth & Ocean Sciences | CO2 Export from Sea Ice: An Atmospheric Carbon Sequestration Mechanism? | |
| Milind Kandlikar, Liu Institute for Global Issues & Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability | Can Solar Power become a Tool for Pro-Poor Development in India? | |
| Brenda Poon, Human Early Learning Partnership | Early detection of dyslexia in advantaged and disadvantaged socioeconomic environments: A study of eye movement and phonological awareness | |
| Naznin Virji-Babul, Dept. of Physical Therapy | Concussion in Youth Ice Hockey: New Frontiers in Diagnostic Imaging | |
| Fall 2010 | Zhichun Jing, Dept. of Anthropology | Tracing Human Migration of Ancient Shang Civilization - Using Strontium Isotope ratios of Human Skeletons and the Dialectal Analysis of Oracle Bronze Inscriptions |
| Gina Ogilvie, Centre for Disease Control | Feasibility of self collection for cervical cancer screening in resource limited settings: the ASPIRE program | |
| Philippe Tortell, Dept. of Earth & Ocean Science, Dept. of Botany | Trace gas dynamics and plankton productivity in the Southern Ocean | |
| Helen Tremlett, Dept. of Neurology | Sunshine on Multiple Sclerosis Genes (SuMS-G): Past sun exposure, genetic predisposition and MS risk in the logitudinal Nurses' Health Study I and II | |
| Jinhua Zhao, Dept. of Civil Engineering, SCARP | Car Pride, Car Ownership and Urban Mobility in China: a Pilot Study | |
| Spring 2010 | Rafeef Abugharbieh, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering | Unveiling the Mysteries of Brain Networks: Medical Image Fusion and Mathematical Modeling of Anatomy and Function for Computational Analysis of Human Brain Activity and Understanding of Neurological Disease |
| Colleen Brenner, Dept. of Psychology | Behavioural and Electrophysiological Biomarkers of Bipolar Disorder | |
| Pauline Johnson, Dept. of Microbiology & Immunology | The marriage of the immune system and the gut bacterial community, in sickness and in health |
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| Gunilla Öberg, Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability | Sustainable water and sanitation in growing urban areas | |
| Tony Pitcher, Fisheries Centre | Valuing The Human Dimensions of Fisheries | |
| Fall 2009 | Mark Ansermino, Dept. of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology, Therapeutics | Development and Evaluation of a Wireless Pulse Oximeter on a Cell phone (iPleth), for safe Perioperative Care in Uganda |
| Cathie Garnis, Dept. of Surgery | Deciphering the role of microRNAs in oral cancer progression | |
| Theresa Satterfield, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability | Collaborative research and capacity building in new approaches to resource development on Indigenous lands (Lessons from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Chile) | |
| Steven Shechter, Dept. of Operations and Logistics | Optimal search with application to minimally invasive surgery | |
| William Sheel, Dept. of Human Kinetics | Kenyan Running: Lungs, Genes, Sport and Peace | |
| Spring 2009 | Erin Baines, Liu Institute for Global Issues | Against Mass Atrocities: Community Based Strategies to Document Human Rights Abuses in Ongoing Conflict Settings (Colombia and Uganda) |
| Ramon Lawrence, Dept. of Computer Science, UBC Okanagan | Reducing Water Consumption for Irrigation using a Wireless Soil Moisture Sensor network | |
| Maria Teresa Maldonado-Pareja, Dept. of Earth & Ocean Sciences |
Genomic and proteomic analysis of trace metal biochemistry in marine phytoplankton | |
| Alireza Nojeh, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering | Toward single cell-genomics: ultra-sensitive RNA detection using nanoscale devices | |
| James Rochlin, Dept. of Political Science, UBC Okanagan | Strengthening local capacity to track potential environmental and health impacts of petroleum production: A Canadian-Ecuador research collaboration | |
| Fall 2008 | Jacob Goheen, Dept. of Zoology | Livestock Production, Predator-Prey Dynamics, and Wildlife Management in Human-Occupied Savannas: Using Cattle to Conserve Wildlife |
| Hannu Larjava, Dept. of Oral Biological & Medical Sciences | Resolvin EI and hypertrophic scarring | |
| Annalee Yassi, Global Health Research Program | Reducing HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and the Transmission of other Infectious Diseases in Healthcare Workers: A Canadian-South African Research Collaboration | |
| Konrad Walus, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering | Measuring Plant Growth with Inkjet Micropatterned Arrays | |
| Angela Towle, Division of Health Care Communication | Patients as educators of health professionals: an international stury of factors that promote and hinder long-term sustainability | |
| Spring 2008 | Rachel Fernandez, Dept. of Microbiology & Immunology | Improving whole-cell pertussis (whooping cough) vaccines by modulating lipid A |
| Tirso Gonzales, BarberSchool of Arts & Sciences, UBC Okanagan | Community-based Mapping of Andean Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge: PRATEC as a Pilot Case | |
| Vinay Kamat, Dept. of Anthropology | Structural violence, social suffering and everyday survival strategies of single mothers in Tanzania | |
| Evgeny Pakhomov, Dept. of Earth & Ocean Science | Venturing into the “Twilight Zone”: where does all the carbon go? | |
| Victoria Purcell-Gates, Dept. of Language & Literacy Education | Literacy development across colonial and indigenous borders in Oaxaca, Mexico | |
| Fall 2007 | W. Thomas Boyce, Human Early Learning Partnership | Homeostasis reconsidered: Autocatalytic loops in genesis of stress activity |
| Julian Davies, Dept. of Microbiology & Immunology | Integron-associated antibiotic resistance genes in environmental biofilms | |
| Clyde Hertzman, Human Early Learning Partnership | An international nexus: Creating a global alliance for early child development | |
| Hussein Keshani, Faculty of Creative & Critical Studies, UBC Okanagan | The ‘Medieval’ Delhi Humanities Computing Research Collective | |
| David Speert, Infectious & Immunological Diseases Division, Dept. of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine | Establishment of a birth cohort study in Paarl, Western Cape Province, South Africa | |
| Spring 2007 | Tom Beatty, Dept. of Microbiology & Immunology | Optimization of photosynthetic proteins and attachment to electrodes for conversion of light to electrical current |
| Maxwell Cameron, Dept. of Political Science | The State of Democracy in Latin America: Toward an International Research Network for reporting on compliance with the Inter-American democratic charter | |
| Catherine Dauvergne, Faculty of Law | Illegal Migration and the State Research Cluster | |
| Sarah Otto, Dept. of Zoology | Controlling Weeds with Selfish Genetic Elements | |
| Michael Russello, Barber School of Arts & Sciences, UBC Okanagan | Conservation of the lowland tapir across the dynamic landscape of the Pantanal wetlands, Brazil |
