Water Quality Centre gets funding splash

Trent will receive its largest single equipment grant ever -- valued at up to $810,000 -- from a federal science agency to help establish a Water Quality Centre.

Trent's success in the first round of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) funding competition was announced to Senate Oct. 19 by Dean Paul Healy. The Trent proposal was measured against three CFI criteria: quality of research and suitability of the infrastructure; contribution to strengthening the capacity for innovation; and potential benefits of the research to Canada.

"This is a major success," according to Healy. "It's one of the largest awards made, and its made to a small university. This will provide a strategic boost to elevate Trents reputation in environmental research and training, and evolving emphasis on graduate education in Watershed Ecosystems."

The Trent proposal recognizes that Canada's population and economic growth will put increasing pressure on aquatic resources to sustain uses ranging from drinking water to recreation, urban development and industry.

The Water Quality Centre's research effort will develop cost-effective, rapid and more effective techniques for evaluating water quality and training young researchers to be innovative and creative. The Centre's sophisticated equipment will be housed within Trent's existing Environmental Sciences Building or the Science Complex.

The proposal's major authors were Environmental and Resource Studies professors Doug Evans and Chris Metcalfe.

"The important part about the Centre is that it will contain truly state-of-the-art equipment," says Evans. "Trent will be the only university in this region to have such equipment, so research done here will have regional and national implications."