This announcement originally appeared on Acadia University’s website and has been republished with their permission.
The Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has just announced that Acadia Psychology Professors, Dr. Anne-Sophie Champod and Dr. Daniel Lametti, have been awarded $371,012 through the John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) toward a $927,533 project to construct and equip the Acadia University Centre for Neuroscience and Cognitive Health.
This critical CFI funding has been matched by Research Nova Scotia (RNS) funding support of $371,014 and will serve to meet a high priority health focus area of the province of Nova Scotia. The Centre will be an invaluable asset for the Department of Psychology and the Acadia community at large. The project will involve major renovations in the lower level of Horton Hall to create an open and shared research space to facilitate interaction between students, faculty, and outside researchers, and to house new cutting-edge neuroscience equipment currently unavailable in the region (including functional neuroimaging, biological motion tracking, and non-invasive brain stimulation).
The new Centre will support innovative and high-impact research programs that will advance the knowledge of the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive and motor functions in healthy individuals, how these mechanisms are altered with learning or by disease, and how they respond to various interventions.
The Acadia University Centre for Neuroscience and Cognitive Health will create an environment in which Drs Champod, Lametti, and their colleagues can collaborate on projects involving a range of healthy populations and patient groups with important implications for the understanding and treatment of various health conditions (e.g., for stroke recovery and speech therapy). It will also significantly increase the breadth of training and opportunities they can offer students in the fields of cognitive and clinical neuroscience and will enable and inspire future discovery as well as faculty and student recruitment.
This prestigious funding is an important moment for Acadia University as it expands the institution’s research capacity. An elated Dean of Research & Graduate Studies, Dr. Anna Redden, notes that the centre is aligned with Acadia’s Strategic Research Plan, and “will help the school retain and recruit faculty and create a much-needed anchor facility in the Department of Psychology to impact the academic unit well into the future.” “Importantly,” Redden adds, the Centre “will provide tremendous momentum for a neuroscience research cluster at Acadia that collaborates with internal researchers and external organizations both at home and abroad to collectively address critical challenges in brain science.”
Through CFI, the Government of Canada is giving more than $96 million in funding to support 377 new research infrastructure projects at 55 institutions from coast to coast. This total includes more than $22 million under the CFI’s Infrastructure Operating Fund to assist institutions with the incremental operating and maintenance costs associated with the new infrastructure.