Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre Awarded Grants for Acquisition of Biotech and Nanophotonics Equipment

Professor Marc André Gauthier and Professor Luca Razzari of the Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre have each been awarded large grants from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for the acquisition of state-of-the-art biotech and nanophotonics equipment.

To this funding will be added matching grants from the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche, de la Science et de la Technologie (MESRST). These new laboratories will help us develop new approaches for improving health and information technologies, train the next generation of highly qualified high-tech workers, and transfer technology and expertise to local startups.

Bio-hybrid materials

Professor Gauthier's new Laboratory of Bio-Hybrid Materials (LBM) will enable him to tackle the numerous challenges of designing these functional materials and make it possible for the biomedical and biotech sectors to take full advantage of their new and unique properties. Professor Gauthier and his team will work on developing new bio organic reactions involving synthetic and natural molecules and improving those that already exist. They will examine the architecture of protein-polymer grafts and develop methods for adjusting the structure and function of bio-hybrid materials in order to evaluate their therapeutic potential.

Plasmonic nanostructures and nonlinear optics

Professor Luca Razzari will use his Laboratory of Nanostructure-Assisted Spectroscopy and Nonlinear Optics (NASNO Lab) to document the properties of plasmonic nanostructures, improve nanospectroscopies and explore new photonic nanodevices. He will also develop new biosensors able to identify very small numbers of biomarkers. This may have an important impact in the early diagnosis of several diseases such as cancer and life-threatening infectious diseases. Besides this, he will investigate a new generation of nanoplasmonic devices for information and communications technology applications.