Insights (page 2)

Insights (page 2) McGill University

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Home > McGill News > 2007 > Summer 2007 > Insights > Insights (page 2)

Insights (page 2)

Nobels in the making?

It’s always heartening to start out on the right foot. Four McGill researchers have been named among the 2007 recipients of Sloan Research Fellowships, designed to help early-career scientists establish their labs and research. The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awards 118 fellowships each year. McGill’s Sloan showing outperformed all other Canadian universities for the second year in a row.

Mathieu Blanchette, Aashish Clerk, Patrick Hayden, BSc’98, and Jacques Verstraete will enjoy two-year fellowships each worth $45,000 U.S. The funds may be used for any research-related purpose, a flexibility rare in academic grants.

All McGill’s new Sloan Fellows came from the Faculty of Science. Mathieu Blanchette, an assistant professor of computer science at McGill’s Centre for Bioinformatics, uses complex algorithms to decode the function of DNA. Aashish Clerk, an assistant professor of physics, is a theoretical condensed matter physicist. His main interests concern the complex quantum-mechanical behaviour of electrons in nanostructures.

Assistant professor of computer science Patrick Hayden’s work focuses on developing new ways to manipulate quantum information at the very limits of the laws of physics, with the ultimate aim of helping to make quantum computers a reality. Jacques Verstraete, an assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, works in the relatively new areas of extremal and probabilistic combinatories.

Remember those names. The Sloan Foundation has a good track record for spotting talent: 34 Sloan fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.

Killam conquest

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Professors Patrick Selvadurai and Rod Macdonald are the latest McGill scholars to win one of Canada’s most prestigious research awards: the Canada Council for the Arts’ $100,000 Killam Prize. The McGill pair captured two of the five Killams awarded nationwide this year.

Selvadurai is William Scott Professor and James McGill Professor in McGill’s Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics. He is internationally recognized for his work in theoretical, applied and computational mechanics. His work in geomechanics — applying engineering principles to earthly materials — has led to the creation of safer storage facilities for nuclear waste.

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Macdonald, former Dean of Law and current F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at McGill, is a public intellectual known for wide-ranging interests that include child abuse, small claims court and aboriginal justice. Macdonald is humble about his achievements. “I couldn’t have gotten the award for being a superstar in one particular area,” he says. “I think my career has been characterized by being eclectic; I am not the expert on anything, I am the second-best call on everything.”

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