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25 McGill professors awarded $7.7 million in CFI funding

Published: 20 August 2026

From next-generation energy solutions to sustainable food innovation, 25 McGill research projects receive support through CFI's John R. Evans Leaders Fund

Twenty-five McGill professors have secured $7.7 million in funding through the Canadian Foundation for Innovation's (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) to strengthen the research infrastructure supporting their work. The Government of Quebec will match the federal investment, bringing the total value of the funding to more than $15 million. 

 The funding comes through the CFI’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), which helps Canadian universities attract and retain world-class research talent by providing the state-of-the-art infrastructure researchers need to succeed.  

Across Canada, the CFI is investing $97.5 million through JELF to support 334 research projects at universities and research institutions nationwide, as announced today. 

 

List of the 25 CFI JELF-funded projects at McGill  

 
Ultra-high Resolution Mapping of the Medial Temporal Lobe Memory System in Health and Disease
Samantha Audrain, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery
$124,420

Characterizing Naturalistic Memory and its Neural Correlates in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the Healthy Brain
Alexander Barnett, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery
$113,730

High-throughput Platform to Develop Novel Biological Control Agents for Sustainable Crop Protection
Martin Filion, Associate Professor, Department of Plant Science
$148,336

Sustainable Food Analysis Platform for Enabling Novel Food Innovations
Saji George, Associate Professor, Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry
$402,116

Charting the Extremes of the Universe using Coherent Radio Transients
Jason Hessels, Professor, Department of Physics
$800,000

Elucidating the Molecular Fingerprints of Biological Oxidation
Jean-Philip Lumb, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
$284,298

Chromatin Regulation of Mammalian Cell fate and Carcinogenesis
Benjamin Martin, Assistant Professor, Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology
$257,704

The Microbiology Integrated Citizen science Research laboratory for One Health (MICROONE)
Jennifer Ronholm, Associate Professor, Department of Animal Science and Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry
$800,000

Uncovering the Logic of Synaptic Wiring
Per Jesper Sjostrom, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine and Department of Neurology & Neurosurgery
$102,073

Infrastructure for Streamlining Extracellular Vesicle Isolation and Profiling in Host-Parasite Interaction Studies
Lucienne Tritten, Assistant Professor in the Department of Parasitology
$425,481

Precision Hybrid Manufacturing Through Robotics and Terminal Management
Stephen Yue, Professor, Department of Mining and Materials Engineering
$84,138

Smart Biopolymeric Metamaterials: Facility for 3D Printing, Electromagnetic
Abdolhamid Akbarzadeh Shafaroudi, Associate Professor, Department of Bioresource Engineering
$350,000

Low-cost Imaging Biomarkers for Point-of-care Assessment of Neurodegeneration
Udunna Anazodo, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery
$190,986

High Speed Diagnostics for Developing Advanced Alternative Fuel Energy Systems
Jeffrey Bergthorson, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
$401,084

Investigating the Role of Gene Regulatory Networks on Tissue Self-organization
Loic Binan, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Genetics
$316,000

Machine Learning of High-Resolution Images for Improved Energy and Environmental Outcomes
Sarah Jordaan, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering
$94,434

Extended Reality Semi-Immersive Technologies Accelerating the Transition to a Circular Economy in the Housing Sector
Naomi Keena, Associate Professor, Peter Guo-Hua Fu School of Architecture
$184,364

Innovative Imaging of Brain Activity Patterns in Memory Networks: Implications for Aging and Dementia
Majid Mohajerani, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry
$402,401

Discovery of Mechanisms of Cancer Immune Evasion and Next-generation Immunotherapies
John Stagg, Professor, Goodman Cancer Institute & Department of Microbiology and Immunology
$560,825

High-dimensional Spectral Flow Sorting of Rare Immune Cells Driving CNS Compartmentalized Inflammation in MS
Simon Thebault, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery
$297,980

Amplifying the Voices of the Displaced
Jennifer Welsh, Professor, Department of Political Science
$380,086

An Integrated MS Platform for Multi-modal Metabolomics
Jianguo Xia, Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology
$337,166

Whole-brain-hemisphere Cryosectioning for Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics and Proteomics in Human Neuropathology
Stephanie Zandee, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery
$220,933

Shedding a New Light on Neuromodulation within the Behaving Brain
Nicolas Tritsch, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
$221,402

Biomarker Discovery through Automatized Rare Urinary Microbe Culture
Eva Michaud, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery
$172,375

 

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