Ontario Challenge Fund supports Trent's centres

Trent University has received $910,000 from the Ontario Challenge Fund to support the creation of the Water Quality Centre and the Oliver Ecological Centre.

Last year the university successfully applied for funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which contributed $810,000 toward the Water Quality Centre and $474,000 to the Ecological Centre. The provincial funding application was made at the same time and the university was notified this summer that $810,000 was provided for the Water Quality Centre, and that $100,000 was approved for the Ecology Centre. This is the first award to Trent University from this new fund.

Funds from the Ontario Challenge Fund will be used to purchase equipment to develop both new science centres. The fund was created in 1998 by the provincial government to provide $50 million over 10 years to support several objectives, including efforts to improve the province's ability to attract and keep top notch researchers and conduct state of the art work.

The provincial funding will permit the Water Quality Centre to obtain some of the best equipment available anywhere in North America, Paul Healy, Dean of Research and Graduate Studies says. Obtaining this funding "will enable our researchers to compete successfully for additional grants for research, particularly in the environmental science area."

The federal and provincial funding is in addition to that received from a variety of matching private-sector partnerships negotiated through the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and the Development Office.