Mcdonald Institute receives $45.5M in federal budget

The federal government is providing $45.5 million in funding for astrophysics research and infrastructure.

The five-year funding announcement was part of multimillion-dollar commitment to science research and infrastructure contained in last week's federal budget.

The funding is to support work taking place at the Arthur B. Mcdonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute, a cross-country network of researchers located at Queen's University.

“This new investment is welcome and exciting,” Ken Clark, professor of physics and associate scientific director of the Mcdonald Institute, said in an announcement about the funding. “It will provide the scientific and technical expertise for Canada to develop and host next-generation, global-scale experiments, to secure further foreign investments in our research ecosystem, and to deliver on scientific breakthroughs.”

Since 2016, the Mcdonald Institute has co-ordinated the work into some of the biggest questions in astrophysics, including work on dark matter and neutrinos, including at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

Since its establishment, the institute has led to the hiring of 15 faculty and research scientists at eight institutions.

“The Mcdonald Institute has helped to cement Canada's leadership in physics on the global stage,” said Arthur Mcdonald, the Gray Chair Emeritus at Queen's University and the 2015 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

“This ongoing support, coupled with investment from other public sources, will see the Mcdonald Institute and partners like SNOLAB accelerate the pursuit of next-generation, global-scale research that will advance our basic understanding of the building blocks of the universe,” added Patrick Deane, principal and vice-chancellor of Queen's University.

Based at Queen's, the Mcdonald Institute was established in 2016 through a $63-million investment by the federal Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

The institute now includes researchers at 11 universities — Queen's, Carleton University, Mcgill University, Laurentian University, Simon Fraser University, University of Alberta, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, University of Montréal, Sherbrooke, and University of Victoria — and six research institutes — SNOLAB in Sudbury, Perimeter Institute, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Institute of Particle Physics and TRIUMF.