The Government of Canada recently announced an investment of over $1.7 billion in support for 7,700 researchers and research projects at post-secondary institutions and research hospitals across the country.

This investment includes funding for UBC researchers through the Canada Research Chairs program; CFI’s Innovation Fund; NSERC Alliance Grants; and SSHRC Insight Development Grants as well as graduate student and postdoctoral scholarships and fellowships, and support through the Research Support Fund.

Congratulations to all of the DMCBH researchers and trainees who were awarded funding.

Canada Research Chair

Kamyar Keramatian: Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Early Intervention in Psychosis/Bipolar Disorder

Dr. Kamyar Keramatian is an adolescent and adult psychiatrist and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. He currently serves as the co-medical manager of the UBC Mood Disorders Centre and the physician lead for the Coastal Early Psychosis Intervention (EPI) Program.

His research aims to investigate neuroimaging and neurocognitive measures that hold promise in predicting clinical outcomes and response to various interventions in patients in the early stages of bipolar disorder and at-risk individuals.

 

CFI Innovation Fund

SMART Labs
UBC Lead: Janice Eng

The rehabilitation team led by Dr. Janice Eng was successful in receiving over $5 million in funding including over $2.1 million from the CFI Innovation Fund for their SMART Labs, with the remainder of funding from the provincial BCKDF fund and matching contributions.  Several other DMCBH members are part of this application, including Drs. Lara Boyd, Teresa Liu-Ambrose and Noah Silverberg. These lab facilities will be located at the GF Strong Rehab Centre which is the provincial rehabilitation centre.

Several pieces of equipment are designed for research for people with neurological health conditions, including a driver simulator, virtual reality equipment, body-weight supported harness that facilitates walking in any direction, autonomic function equipment, and neuromodulation equipment. The team will address three grand challenges to: 1) develop innovative treatments, such as brain and spinal cord stimulation treatments, to maximize recovery; 2) create simulated real-world activities using technology (e.g., virtual reality, driver simulation) that ensure treatment benefits are transferred to everyday life; and 3) transform the delivery of rehabilitation through innovative programs to increase access, especially in rural regions (e.g., e-health coupled with sensors to monitor health).

 

Field Camera and Shim System for Precision MRI
UBC Lead: Alexander Rauscher
UBC Co-lead: Piotr Kozlowski

The CFI funded 3T research magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner at the UBC MRI Research Centre is used for MRI methods development, the investigation of the biophysical basis of the MRI signal, neurology (concussion, multiple sclerosis, dementia, etc), and neuroscience. These research activities use advanced MRI scans for functional MRI and quantitative MRI. MRI data are acquired and reconstructed under the assumption that of a defined and known sampling scheme of the data. However, deviations in the magnetic field distort the sampling scheme in an unknown way, resulting reconstructed images that are degraded by geometric distortions and reduced signal to noise ratio.

This new funding from the CFI Innovation Fund will help improve the quality and precision of MRIs. The field distortions can be reduced by localized shim coils that compensate unwanted background field. In addition, a field camera can measure the field deviations and feed the information into the reconstruction algorithm. This allows the reconstruction based on the actual sampling scheme rather than the nominal sampling scheme that is affected by field distortions. The such corrected images have much better quality and higher signal to noise ratio. The devices will support numerous research initiatives in the field of neuroimaging with MRI. Examples include precise localization of deep brain structures for neurosurgery, reduced artifacts in patient populations such as people with Parkinson disease, dementia, neurotrauma, stroke, and improved functional MRI of small brain structures.

 

NSERC Alliance Grants

A novel approach to study occupant kinematics, muscle activity and cervical spine posture in vehicle rollovers
UBC PI:  Peter Cripton

A unified approach to analyze the time-frequency representation of nociceptive-related potentials
UBC PI:  John Kramer

 

SSHRC Insight Development Grants

Generating and testing hypotheses about participatory sensemaking
UBC PI: Rebecca Todd

 

Canada Graduate Scholarships – Doctoral (CGS-D)

  • Aysha Allard Brown
  • Rocio Hollman

 

NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships (NSERC PGSD)

  • Chloe Chernoff
  • Shalini Iyer