Université Laval Proposals

Canada Excellence Research Chair in Enabling Photonic Innovations
for Information and Communication
Tomorrow's world will be one of holographic video conferencing, remote surgery and widespread surveillance. This information will have to be generated, transmitted, stored and processed at rates that we can't yet imagine. According to trends in the past 20 years, electronics is already starting to show signs of waning. Optics and photonics will be the only technologies able to support the coming revolution. Given its pioneering role in optics and photonics in Canada, and in light of recent infrastructure investment in this field, Université Laval is poised to take on the challenge of the new information and communications world by setting up a Chair devoted to developing innovative photonic components.

Canada Excellence Research Chair in Point-of-Care Diagnostic Technologies
for Better Global Health
Doctors prescribed an average of 15 tests per Canadian, or 500 million tests in total, in 2005. Diagnostics guides 60 to 70 per cent of all medical decisions, but the tests used to diagnose most diseases are slow and less than optimal. Université Laval researchers are world leaders in rapid (under-an-hour) DNA-based tests for infectious diseases, with diagnosistic tools fabricated in Québec City and sold worldwide. This Chair aims at developing "point-of care" molecular diagnostic technologies to improve health worldwide. The devices and tests developed would provide real-time diagnostics in doctors' offices, or in remote areas like Northern Canada or Africa, reducing waiting time and referral to hospitals while saving lives and reducing health-care costs.

Canada Excellence Research Chair in Remote Sensing of Canada's New Arctic Frontier
Rapid climate change and industrialization are unlocking the natural resources of the vast Canadian Arctic. However, a lack of observations from the natural, social and human health sciences is hindering environmental stewardship, economic development, and the ability of northern communities to adapt. By bringing together ArcticNet and Geoïde, two pan-Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence hosted at Université Laval, the proposed Chair will bring the powerful tools of geomatics to Arctic research, transforming and adding tremendous value to current observational programs. This innovative research program will open up the new field of Northern geomatics via satellite monitoring, as well as new ocean-observing technologies and multi-source spatial data integration.

For more information, contact:

Université Laval
c/o Monsieur Edwin Bourget
Vice-recteur à la recherche et à la création
Québec, Québec
Canada G1V 0A6
Telephone: 418-656-2599
Email: edwin.bourget@vrr.ulaval.ca
www.ulaval.ca