Brock gets funding to study wine drinkers’ tastes
A virtual reality lab will soon be a reality at Brock University thanks to nearly $ 1 million in provincial funding that will help give researchers insight into choices consumers make regarding wine.
Reza Moridi, Ontario’s minister of research innovation and science, was at the university Monday to announce the grant as part of a $ 137- million investment into 53 research projects at 17 institutions throughout the province.
Those research projects, selected based on their economic and societal benefits to the province, include a wide range of scientific disciplines.
Funding includes $ 11 million for a precision medicine program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, $ 6.6 million for an infrastructure resilience study at University of Toronto, and $ 1.2 million for an ultra- sensitive dark matter detector being developed by Queen’s University.
At Brock, $ 960,000 in provincial funding, along with matching funding from the federal government, will help pay for a $ 2.4- million expansion of Brock’s research winery to add “the world’s first mediated reality blind consumer laboratory,” as well as state- of- the- art fermentation facilities and new instruments to analyze the aroma and flavour of wines and to enhance the detection of disease in grapes, said Debbie Inglis, director of the Brock University Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute.
She said the laboratory, being called R3CL ( for augmented reality, virtual reality and sensory reality consumer laboratory), “will incorporate elements of physical, augmented and virtual realities to understand the drivers of consumer choice.”
The technology will ultimately help Ontario wine producers become more successful in a competitive global marketplace, said university president Gervan Fearon.
“Today’s announcement is certainly a strong statement about the world- class work that continues to be done by Debbie ( Inglis) and CCOVI, as well as industry partners,” Fearon said.
“Anyone who drives the back roads of the Niagara region quickly sees how important the grape and wine industry is to Ontario.”
Moridi said investments at institutions across Ontario “help our researchers make breakthroughs that help us live longer and healthier lives, protect our environment, invent new technologies and products and to build new companies and indeed create new jobs.”
He called the grants an “investment in discovery and new knowledge, and also creating the foundation for future economic growth.”
In an interview, Moridi said the grants cover a wide spectrum when it comes to science and technology.
“It should be that way because basic fundamental research feeds into applied research, and applied research feeds into commercialization, which leads to economic growth,” said Moridi, MPP for Richmond Hill.
“Whatever we invest it’s investment in economic development.”
Moridi said the dark matter detector planned for Queen’s University’s Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is being established in the hope of proving for the first time that theoretical matter exists, comprising about 27 per cent of the universe.
“If they do that, we are going to have another Nobel Prize. That’s my prediction,” he said.