Building partnerships to drive change

There exists an image of the solitary genius, toiling day and night, pushing toward a “Eureka!” moment that will clarify deep mysteries. The parts are true enough. Research does entail long hours of hard work. Illuminating breakthroughs do strike. And having a nimble, brilliant mind certainly helps. But isolation isn’t a hallmark of today’s research.

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More Sites, More Insights

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In 1992, researchers at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and six U.S. institutions began a long-term study of treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The study, which will run until at least 2013, has yielded dozens of publications, and new insights into the overwhelming benefits of combining medication with psychosocial treatment.

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…And Social Justice For All

McGill PhD candidate Sami Kilani (right) is a Palestinian member of the MMEP executive committee. School of Social Work professor Jim Torczyner founded the MMEP in 1994 as a way to build peace in the Middle East by promoting social justice.

The McGill Middle East Program in Civil Society and Peace Building is taking rights-based community practices out of the social work textbooks and putting them to work in the streets of Israel, Palestine and Jordan.

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Sweating the small stuff

Sweating the small stuff

The third edition of the Junior Nanotech Network, to be held in 2010, promises to continue the student exchange’s tradition of cutting-edge research.

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From Green Revolution to Evergreen Solutions

If you can’t eat it, it’s not food. Learn about bioresource engineering professor Vijaya Raghavan’s decades-long effort to bring post-harvest innovations to Indian farms.

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Here’s To World Health

Consumer psychology professor Laurette Dubé

Laurette Dubé’s career as a nutritionist seems so distant that she calls it “a former life.” In 2000, Dubé found new inspiration in her old career, redirecting her research efforts toward questions of global health. She spoke to Headway following the launch of the first annual “Think-and-Do Tank,” part of the McGill World Platform for Health and Economic Convergence held at McGill during November 2009.

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Turning Point 1969

In 1969, nursing research in Canada was so young that it didn’t have its own scholarly journal. Moyra F. Allen, director of the graduate program at McGill’s School of Nursing, took issue with this omission—so she filled the gap with a trailblazing series called Nursing Papers.

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Catherine Bradley

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Catherine Bradley has made and designed costumes for theatre companies across Canada, including the Stratford Festival, the National Arts Centre, the Montreal Opera and the National Ballet. Since 1988, she’s also taught the art of costuming, and its history, in McGill’s Department of English. Her research project, dubbed the Digital Costume Illustration System, allows a layperson to easily transform a digital photograph of an actor into a detailed costume drawing that is perfectly proportioned to that person’s exact measurements.

Outside the Music Box

Avrum Hollinger (middle), a graduate student in Marcelo Wanderley's (left) electrical engineering lab, built a metal-free keyboard that can be played inside a highly magnetic MRI machine. The special instrument now makes it possible for neuroscientist Robert Zatorre (right) to monitor musicians' brain activity while they play.

McGill neuroscientist Robert Zatorre has a standard answer whenever he’s asked whether there is a musical region to the human brain. “Everything above the neck.”

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A Space Junk Odyssey

Humans are getting good at reaching outer space. But, like on Earth, we’re lousy at cleaning up after ourselves up there. Law professor Ram Jakhu is helping tame this growing otherworldly problem—before it’s too late.

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Green Team

During the July 2009 Green Crop Network Workshop, researchers visited Quebec's first switchgrass farm, in Valleyfield. Marginal farmlands can successfully produce large switchgrass crops, making the plant potentially visible as a biofuel source.

We need food. We need fuel. The Green Crop Network is working on ways we can have both. (Hold the greenhouse gases.)

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Research Strength in Numbers

Complex problems require complex solutions. That’s why the Green Crop Network brings together a variety of research expertise from McGill and 13 other Canadian universities.

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Casualties of Conflict

A drawing by a former Sierra Leonean child soldier.

We hear increasingly about the difficulties of veterans trying to return to ordinary life after a stint in the military. Associate professor of social work Myriam Denov is involved with a group of former soldiers whose re-entry into society is nothing short of miraculous.

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Stargazer Wins Prix du Québec

Vicky Kaspi had to divert her gaze from the heavens long enough to shake some hands and collect some more hardware. McGill’s Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology and Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics was awarded a 2009 Prix du Québec, the highest honour conferred by the provincial government, in recognition of her contribution to the social and scientific advancement of Quebec.

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Of Health Care and Earthquakes

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is funding nine new Strategic Research Networks that support the research priority areas identified in the Government of Canada’s Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy. Two of these initiatives are based at McGill: the Healthcare Support through Information Technology Enhancements (hSITE) and the Canadian Seismic Research Network. The projects were selected through a peer-reviewed competition.

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