February 1, 2002

Friday, February 1, 2002

$19 million in research funding
Storm means longer interview period
Slivers of UW land for sale
What'll be happening this month

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Tips on beating stress, from the University of Michigan

$19 million in research funding

UW will receive a $19 million share of almost $800 million in research funds handed out on Wednesday by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

"This will represent an investment of over $1.4 billion in research infrastructure across the country," says Suzanne Corbeil, a vice-president of CFI, pointing out that private sources and provincial governments -- including the Ontario Innovation Trust, in UW's case -- are expected to more than match the federal money. Generally CFI provides 40 per cent of the total cost of a project.

CFI's board had originally budgeted $350 million from its "innovation fund", Corbeil said, but end up approving $601 million for 208 projects. "The Board concluded it would be in the best interest of research in Canada to proceed at this time with a larger investment, given the quality and potential impact of these projects. This recognizes the high quality of the projects and the high standards achieved in this competition. Indeed, the Board and the review committees were impressed with the quality and innovation potential of the research and other benefits to Canada."

She said 440 proposals were submitted, with budgets that totalled $1.2 billion.

In addition to the innovation fund, there will be money from the "infrastructure operating fund", "to be used for the incremental operating and maintenance costs", and equalling 30 per cent of what's granted from the main fund.

Some smaller grants were also approved, including "New Opportunities" funding to help 84 new researchers get started in their work. Among them is Eric Fillion of UW's chemistry department, who receives $150,793 for his Organic/Organometallic Chemistry Research Laboratory.

The following projects at Waterloo were funded in this round of CFI grants, a news release says:

A water initiative: integrated groundwater and surface water remediation and management ($5,897,679), James Barker (earth sciences), lead investigator
Facility for Musculo-Vascular Research in Physiology: Instrumentation for the independent and integrated study of exercise and environment on molecular, cellular and functional events ($424,947), Arend Bonen (kinesiology), lead investigator
Facility for Confined Complex Fluids and Polymers Characterization ($762,719), James Forrest (physics), lead investigator
Centre for Advanced Materials Joining Research ($1,203,994), Hugh Kerr (mechanical engineering), lead investigator
Institute for Quantum Computing ($2,993,715), Raymond Laflamme (physics), lead investigator
Thin-film Materials Research Laboratory: Molecular engineering of biotechnological, environmental, and strategic materials ($2,766,608), Tong Leung (chemistry), lead investigator
Giga-to-Nano Electronics Fabrication Facility for Wireless, Bio, Environment and Medical Applications ($5,220,303), Arokia Nathan (electrical and computer engineering), lead investigator

In addition, two of UW's Canada Research Chairs -- Raymond Laflamme (physics) and Michele Mosca (combinatorics and optimization) -- will get a total of $262,813 in funding for lab equipment ("Quantum Information Processing Experiments Using Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance") and theoretical investigations.

Storm means longer interview period

Interviews for spring term co-op jobs will run a day longer than scheduled because of cancellations caused by the storm yesterday and today.

Across campus, people struggled in late yesterday, while some didn't make it to work at all. A few events scheduled for yesterday were cancelled, including the "student-professor night" at the Bombshelter pub scheduled by the faculty of science, and the lecture "Being Compassion: The Dwindling Art of Medicine" sponsored by the Spiritual Heritage Education Network.

And today's freezing rain slowed things down as well. Both days, UW followed its longstanding policy of staying open as long as local public schools are open. The Waterloo Region District School Board cancelled buses both days but didn't close the schools.

In Needles Hall, where the lobby was crowded by 9 a.m. yesterday with well-dressed students waiting for job interviews, Olaf Naese of the co-op and career services department said that "around 15 or 20" employers had postponed their visits. "Some employers changed them to telephone interviews," he said, "but most have chosen other dates later on." And by mid-morning, calls were already coming in from employers scheduled to visit today who wanted to make new arrangements.

Naese said one interviewer coming from St. Thomas, south of London, reported leaving home at 5:30 yesterday morning to get to campus by 8:30. "The interviewer from ATS in Cambridge took two hours to arrive, as did a CECS staff member who lives in the same city. Another employer who lives in Toronto called in on his cell phone and said it had taken him two hours just to get to the 401 in the city and then decided that he would turn around and go back since he was going to be much too late.

"There were other people who came in from Toronto and reported no major problem."

He said the current interview period was scheduled to run through February 13, "with a buffer day for postponements on February 14. February 14 is fairly heavily booked now and it appears that we will no option but to use February 15 as an interview day too."

Slivers of UW land for sale

Three separate parcels of UW-owned land may soon be sold for various reasons, the building and properties committee says in its report to the board of governors for next Tuesday's meeting.

The board will be asked to approve two sales, both tiny:

A narrow area, totaling 0.026 acres, or 107 square metres, along the front of the "BFG" building at 195 Columbia Street, home of earth sciences research. It's to be sold to the City of Waterloo ("at a price consistent with that offered to other adjacent landowners") for the widening of Columbia Street.
A wedge-shaped area, totaling 0.07 acres, or 265 square metres, on the east side of the 195 Columbia property, to be sold to neighbouring Research In Motion. RIM wants to redesign the entrance road and parking lot for its collection of buildings at the corner of Phillip and Columbia Streets, and is also seeking to rent another parcel of land from UW -- a narrow strip along the north side of the East Campus Hall property -- for parking. Sale price for the RIM land is not mentioned in the board agenda documents.

The third piece of land that's up for sale is larger, 2.76 acres. It's a pair of triangular areas that were part of UW's north campus but were cut off from the rest when Fischer-Hallman Road was realigned in 1997. Originally there was a deal to sell them to Trillium Estates Ltd. for $225,000 for construction of a group of townhouses, but the plan fell through.

"Recently," says the board of governors agenda, "UW was approached by the City, requesting sale of this parcel for location of a fire station. The City is also negotiating with other land owners for possible sites. . . . UW has indicated willingness to negotiate selling the land to the City for this purpose at fair market value."

The new facility is to replace the existing fire station on Westmount Road, to improve fire protection for the growing west side of the city.

What'll be happening this month

Today brings a visit to campus by Cathy Cotton, a 1971 graduate from UW (applied math and physics) who's now on the staff of Statistics Canada, an expert on the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. At 10:30, she'll give a talk mostly for researchers, about the SLID itself: "What is it? Can it answer my research questions?" Then at 12:30 she'll lead a brown-bag lunch seminar mostly for students, "Low Income Measurement in Canada", co-sponsored by the Women in Mathematics Committee. Both events will be held in Math and Computer room 5158.

And the department of Germanic and Slavic studies today presents a lecture by Erwin Warkentin, director of Campus Manitoba, under the title "Technology-enhanced partnerships and the 'smaller' disciplines". Says an abstract:

The presentation opens with an outline of the difficulties encountered by smaller university departments when trying to build, rebuild or expand their programming. The discussion will then focus on the central challenges of lower than optimal faculty complement and enrollments that are lower than needed to obtain a critical student mass to deliver a full program. The solution that is proposed is the establishment of strategic partnerships that will allow individual departments to offer full programs that exceed the resources that are available to them. While such partnerships may be theoretically desirable, a practical solution has proven for the most part unworkable. The current impediments to a practical solution will be sketched and possible solutions will be presented. The obstacles delineated will be shown to be institutional and psychological in nature rather than technological. The presentation will then provide demonstrations of current technologies that offer ways in which departments from various universities can indeed deliver programs in partnership. The final segment will provide various models (CVU and Campus Manitoba) by which universities already deliver partnership programs.

The talk starts at 2:30 in Modern Languages room 245.

Jeremy Anglin of the department of psychology is the speaker in a philosophy colloquium at 2:30 in Humanities room 373. Topic: "The Development of Displaced Reference".

Tomorrow -- by which time freezing rain will be just a distant memory -- the career services department presents "The Whole Kit 'n' Kaboodle", a one-day crash course in career planning, from self-assessment to paperwork to interviews. More information is available at ext. 4047.

But members of the ski and snowboard club won't be there -- they're heading off to Blue Mountain tomorrow for a day on the slopes.

Tomorrow is "Fantastic Alumni & Staff Day" at the Warrior basketball games against Guelph. The women's teams play at 12 noon and the men's teams at 2 p.m. in the Physical Activities Complex, and the "fantastic" part, as far as alumni and staff are concerned, is free admission (requested through the alumni or athletics web site). Organizers promise "lots of extra special events and fun for the whole family".

In other sports events this weekend, the hockey Warriors host Guelph at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Columbia Icefield; and the curling team hosts a tournament all weekend, with play at both the Westmount Club and the Granite Club in Kitchener. Away from campus, the badminton team is in Ottawa for the weekend, the women's indoor hockey Warriors are at Guelph, the swimmers are at Laurentian, track and field athletes are in the York Open, and the squash team heads for the individual championships at Toronto.

[Pascal Lectures poster] A UW-based band called Locus, which was featured in the Record's "Indie Music" column the other day, will be playing Saturday night at the Weaver's Arms pub on Phillip Street. "Our music is pretty accessible," says Bruce Millerd, one of the four long-time friends who make up the band, and who admit a major influence from U2. Cover charge tomorrow night: $8.

Coming later in February:

Job Fair at RIM Park, February 6
Tex-Mex bake sale and garage sale, Environmental Studies I, February 6
Pascal Lectures by ethicist Bartha Knoppers, February 6 and 7 (see the poster at right)
"Absurd Person Plural", three plays by the department of drama, February 6-9 and 13-16
FASS, February 7-9
Engineering overview for potential graduate students, University Club, February 8 (3 to 6 p.m.)
"Reading the Bible: Hope and Jubilee", lecture at St. Jerome's University, February 8
"Iced in Black" film festival, "Canadian black experiences on film", February 8-10
Federation of Students elections, February 8-15
"Focus on Crocus" fund-raiser for the CNIB, with plants for sale in South Campus Hall, February 12
Staff association town hall meeting, noon, February 13
Lecture by solar architect Steven Strong, February 14
Reading week, February 18-22 (engineering and mathematics, February 21-22 only)
Hagey Bonspiel, February 23

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
February 1, 1961: Jack Adams becomes UW's first public relations officer. February 1, 1980: Jon Dellandrea comes to UW as director of development.