One of the world’s premier facilities for environmental contamination research, Trent University’s Water Quality Centre (WQC) is receiving $6,374,256 to reach new horizons for research using high resolution mass spectrometry at an announcement on Friday, April 12, 2013.

Dr. Steven E. Franklin, Trent University’s president and vice-chancellor, was joined by Minister of Rural Affairs Jeff Leal, MP Dean Del Mastro and lead researcher Dr. Holger Hintelmann at the event to acknowledge new investments the Centre has received from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The Water Quality Centre is also receiving additional support from 14 partner organizations and 20 per cent of the project funding is being provided through private industry support.

The new investments will allow for upgrades and expansions at Trent’s Water Quality Centre that will facilitate many internal and external research projects, resulting in environmental pollution reduction and a better understanding of the fate and impact of aquatic pollutants. It will also provide specialized training for environmental scientists.

“Trent University prides itself on a strong commitment to environmental research, understanding, and protection at a regional, national and global scale. Grants such as these allow Trent faculty and students to continue their critical and groundbreaking research into water and our environment,” said Dr. Franklin. “Trent’s Water Quality Centre is an example of the successful regional partnerships that Trent University and Fleming College have forged with our community partners and agencies, putting the Peterborough and the Kawartha regions on the map as leaders in water quality research and education.”

“The research at Trent’s Water Quality Centre would not be possible without strong support from the Governments of Canada and Ontario, alongside our industry and community partners,” said Professor Hintelmann. “With this new funding, the Water Quality Centre is expanding its role as a world leader in water research and innovation by applying existing water analytical expertise with the new equipment capabilities to support innovation developments in the health sciences, agriculture and food industries.”

New Water Quality Centre projects enabled by the funding include fingerprinting materials via their trace element composition; generating forensic evidence of the sources and fate of contaminants in the environment; and measuring radioactive elements in the environment quickly and accurately. The new equipment will be also used to determine emerging contaminants and identify their degradation products, and to measure the response of organisms to chemical stress by analyzing changes in the distribution of their proteins and other biomolecules.

In partnership with the Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment (CAWT) at Fleming College, wastewater treatment procedures for the resource and mining sectors will be developed and optimized, in order to reduce environmental contamination arising from these industrial processes effectively and cost-effectively. Similarly, treatment technologies developed through the WQC/CAWT collaboration will help protect the drinking water of rural and remote (including Northern) communities.

In addition to the improved environmental quality and the reduced cost of wastewater treatment and environmental clean-up, the proposed research and infrastructure will also benefit Ontario and Canada by training a large number of highly qualified personnel. These new professionals will strengthen the workforce in industry, government and academia with their specialized knowledge and experience in instrumental analysis and aquatic sciences after their graduation. Finally, Ontario’s scientific community will benefit from the enhanced WQC/CAWT cluster as a nucleus of interdisciplinary environmental research, which will continue to attract top quality researchers and industrial partners to the region for many years to come.

The 10 co-applicants were: Holger Hintelmann, Pete Dillon, Douglas Evans, Céline Guéguen, Raymond March, Chris Metcalfe, Barry Saville, Dirk Wallschläger, Shaun Watmough from Trent University and Brent Wootton of Fleming College.

Dedicated to the development and application of innovative new techniques for the analysis of organic and inorganic contaminants at the isotopic, elemental and molecular scale, Trent University’s Water Quality Centre is a multidisciplinary facility that utilizes state-of-the-art instrumentation. The focus of the Centre is the determination of trace quantities of inorganic and organic substances in aquatic environments. The Water Quality Centre currently houses 16 mass spectrometers, giving researchers the opportunity to carry out many different kinds of investigations in a single lab, a feature unique to the Centre. To date, researchers at the Water Quality Centre have been successful in receiving nine CFI funding awards, and nine investments from ministries within the Government of Ontario.

Created by the Government of Canada in 1997, the CFI strives to build our nation’s capacity to undertake world-class research and technology development that benefits Canadians and the global community. Thanks to CFI investments in state-of-the-art infrastructure, Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research institutions are attracting and retaining the world’s top research talent, training the next generation of researchers, supporting private-sector innovation and creating high-quality jobs that strengthen Canada’s position in today’s knowledge economy.

The Ministry of Research and Innovation supported this project through the Ontario Research Fund-Research Infrastructure program. The Ontario Research Fund helps ensure that the province’s researchers have the facilities they need to conduct cutting-edge research that improves lives while strengthening the economy and creating the jobs of tomorrow.

Posted on Friday, June 14, 2013.