Research will be receiving a boost thanks to funding from the Ontario Research Fund.

Western will receive $19 million to go towards various research endeavours. A dozen research projects at the university will benefit from the funds, which are meant to help strengthen the province’s competitiveness in the global innovation-driven economy.

“We will now have the funds available to develop world class research facilities at Western,” Ted Hewitt, vice-president research and international relations at Western, said. He added initiatives include a first-rate centre for the preservation and analysis of aboriginal artifacts, the construction of the world’s only facility to study the effects or hurricane force winds on buildings and improvements in image-guided surgery.

The program matches funding for awards Western faculty have received from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

“The federal program provides 40 per cent of the funding for equipment and infrastructure for applicants who are able to demonstrate how their work advances innovative research in a wide variety of disciplines,” Hewitt said.

Once approved by the federal program, these grants are then matched by the Ontario government’s ORF program, with the remaining 20 per cent provided by institutional and industry sources.

“We are extremely proud of our researchers, and grateful to the province of Ontario for its continued support of advanced research through ORF,” Amit Chakma, Western president, noted in a press release. “Innovative discoveries made by researchers across the disciplines are resulting in new knowledge that improve health, social and economic welfare through the province.”

Terry Peters, a scientist with Robart’s Imaging Research Group, will be one of the individuals benefiting from the funding. Peters and his colleagues will be purchasing new imaging equipment to be used for the development of minimally invasive surgical procedures.

“The impact will be the development of new surgical techniques that can be performed without major trauma to the patient,” Peters noted. “It will allow us to take maximum advantage of images made with CAT scans and MRI scans.”

Peters placed emphasis on the initiative being a university-wide collaborative project, which will bring many scientists together.

“It’s a tremendous stimulus for interdisciplinary research,” he concluded.

The funding has the potential to impact individuals outside the university community.

“We are recognizing the work that our researchers do and the wealth and jobs they create in London,” Chris Bentley, MPP London West, said in a press release. “Today’s investment will support the work of more than 250 researchers. New discoveries will continue to be made [and] we want those people, those ideas, and those jobs right here in our community.”

Western’s research projects could eventually have an international impact on researching as a whole.

Neal Ferris, Lawson Chair of Canadian archeology at Western, will use the funding to ensure all archaeological collections are preserved and digitized so they continue to be sustainable, and so their information remains accessible to other archaeologists.

“It will put Ontario archaeology on the global discourse in regards to archaeological theory,” Ferris noted. “We’ll be a leader.”

The research funding is part of a $268 million province-wide investment that will support 214 projects and more than 3,300 researchers in 14 cities.