Researchers at Brock

Grant to receive national award for teaching, research

Barry Grant is being honoured for 34 years of teaching, research and overall service with an award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).

Grant will receive the CAUT Distinguished Academic Award at the organization’s annual spring meeting in April. A professor with the Faculty of Social Sciences since 1975, Grant is in the Department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film. His main research interest is in cinema, in particular film genres, with a special focus on science fiction, horror and documentary film. Grant also studies New Zealand cinema and popular music. Profile continued ...

Lung cancer predictors will prevent unneeded biopsies

Martin Tammemagi, associate professor, Community Health Sciences, and a team of U.S. researchers have found a way to better pinpoint when an abnormal chest X-ray means cancer. They studied the chest radiographs of 12,314 people and found 14 factors that help determine whether to proceed with a biopsy. Profile continued...

English professor receives prestigious Killam Fellowship

Sauer, a professor in the Department of English, is only the second Brock professor to receive the Killam Fellowship, an award that comes with two years of funding to focus on one’s area of research. 

Her works focus on the writings of John Milton, the famous early modern poet and polemicist, who composed one of the most celebrated works in the English literary canon, Paradise Lost. Profile continued...

Giant bills generate big interest

“A new kind of heating bill.”   “Who can cool his body fast? Toucan.”   “Toucan’s bill gives big chill.”

Those are just a few of the colourful headlines Glenn Tattersall’s work generated recently when the results of his study were published in the prestigious journal Science.

Tattersall, an associate professor in Biological Sciences, found that Toco Toucans use their bills to regulate their body temperature.

“An elephant uses its ears to dump heat,” Tattersall said. “Mice use their tails. Toucans use their bills.” Profile continued...

Teaching self-esteem in Africa through gymnastics

With this program summer = reading

John McNamara, associate professor, Child and Youth Studies, has teamed with Jackie Van Lankveld, manager of Pre-school Speech and Language Services at the Niagara Peninsula Children’s Centre, to develop a program to keep the minds of kindergarten students sharp, even during a season when school is a memory. Profile continued...

Taking steps towards understanding weight loss

At Brock’s Behavioural Health Sciences Research Lab, two professors and trainee researchers at the graduate and undergraduate levels aim to answer that question across the next three years. Profile continued...

Solving problems on a molecular level

Travis Dudding is a problem solver on a molecular level.

The associate professor in the department of Chemistry spends much of his research time trying to solve the mechanistic riddles around synthetically important chemical reactions using computational chemistry. In many cases, Dudding and his research team are after the synthesis of medicinally useful pharmaceuticals in a much shorter time, while utilizing considerably fewer resources as well.

His work has come to the attention of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, who have awarded Dudding a $64,800 U.S. sub-contract to work on a specific reaction discovered by a colleague at the University at Buffalo. Profile continued...