$4.67M to help answer scientific questions and create international links within the research community

Brain Canada is pleased to announce the awarding of a $4,674,000 2019 Platform Support Grant (PSG) to Dr. Julien Doyon and his team for the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC) at the Montreal Neurological Institute (The Neuro). This funding will support a world-renowned multidisciplinary platform dedicated to brain research using multimodal neuroimaging and neuroinformatics.

Brain Canada’s Platform Support Grants are awarded to teams that are creating and/or enhancing centralized shared resources to increase access to equipment, expertise, data and protocols across research networks. Brain Canada will announce seven additional PSG grants in the coming weeks, as part of a more than $25 million investment in brain research.

Opened in 1984, the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre represents 46 years of innovation and brain imaging technology, housing platforms like the 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, the first 7 Tesla MRI scanner in Canada to scan the whole body, and soon, the first ultra-high resolution positron emission tomography (PET) camera. With the 2019 Platform Support Grant, Dr. Doyon and his team plan to further position the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre as a leader in multi-model neuroimaging, while increasing the capacity to share data and knowledge with the scientific community worldwide.

“For us it was absolutely critical to get the PSG. As a centre, the way we maintain our operations is basically through user fees that researchers pay for having access to our imaging platforms and collect data,” says Dr. Doyon, Director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre. “Yet, we also need support like this grant from Brain Canada to help with new developments related to the acquisition and analysis of novel brain metrics as well as with building an extension of the existing database we have at The Neuro, which allows us to share multiple types of data. This funding will also help in establishing the necessary infrastructure to share information among researchers not only at the BIC, but around the world.”

Platforms that stimulate international collaboration by furthering opportunities for interaction are becoming increasingly necessary to address the evolving needs of high-impact research.

“It is very important to invest in platforms that foster communication between international databases and create links with researchers across the globe,” says Brain Canada President and CEO, Dr. Viviane Poupon, “They are absolutely critical for pushing research forward and exploring the future of imaging and neuroscience.”

Funding for this PSG has been made possible with the financial support of Health Canada, through the Canada Brain Research Fund, an innovative partnership between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada, and The Neuro.

Learn more about this project in Brain Canada’s directory of funded researchers.