UNews - Yllias Chali

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers successful in securing NSERC funding support

trevor.kenney — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 16:23:37 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers from the Departments of Mathematics & Computer Science, Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Physics & Astronomy were awarded grants totalling more than $277,000 as the Government of Canada announced funding awards through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, along with the Honourable Mona Fortier, President of the Treasury Board, announced funding of more than $506 million — an investment in the world’s brightest minds to increase the impact of science, technology and innovation in Canada.

“Discovery is the foundation of all advancements. Through this major investment in some of Canada’s most promising and innovative researchers we are supporting scientists and students to become global leaders in their field,” says Champagne. “By helping to expand the frontiers of science, we are investing in a better society and a brighter future for Canadians.”

Researchers from across the country are receiving the funding to continue to lead world-class research programs in a wide variety of natural sciences and engineering disciplines. These include research programs focused on climate change, chemistry, biology, mathematics and statistics, computer science and artificial intelligence, and engineering.

Dr. Dena McMartin, ULethbridge vice-president (research), says the continued success of applicants from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ is indicative of the innovative environment nurtured by faculty.

“When you have world-class faculty dedicated to their craft, and dedicated to their students and discovery, it fuels their own research programs and inspires colleagues to push for these funding opportunities as well,” says McMartin. “The success of these researchers continues to advance the reputation of their programs within their respective fields and opens up even greater opportunities for their students, trainees and further innovation down the road.”

The following programs are receiving NSERC funding:

Dr. Yllias Chali, Mathematics & Computer Science, Text Summarization and Question Generation Models — $24,000 (5 years)

Dr. Michael Gerken, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Donor-Stabilized Fluorido Cations and New Tungsten-Based Weakly Coordinating Anions — $62,000 (5 years)

Dr. Jean-Denys Hamel, Chemistry & Biochemistry, New Catalytic Methodologies for the Synthesis of Organofluorine Compounds — $25,000 (5 years)

Dr. Jean-Denys Hamel, Chemistry & Biochemistry, New Catalytic Methodologies for the Synthesis of Organofluorine Compounds — $12,500 (1 year)

Dr. Trushar Patel, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Understanding Communications Between Viral RNAs and Human Proteins — $40,000 (5 years)

Dr. Marc Roussel and Dr. Stacey Wetmore, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Critical Renewal of an Obsolete Computational Biochemistry Suite at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge — $90,050 (1 year)

Dr. Mark Walton, Physics & Astronomy, Phase space Quantum Mechanics and the Quantum-Classical Relation — $24,000 (5 years)

The Research Support Fund supports a portion of the costs associated with managing the research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, such as salaries for staff who provide administration support, training costs for workplace health and safety, maintenance of libraries and laboratories, and administrative costs associated with obtaining patents for inventions.

Mitacs Globalink students on campus

trevor.kenney — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:58:42 +0000

They're recognized as being some of the sharpest minds in the world. Now, 46 top undergraduate students from India have come to Alberta to apply their skills to complex research projects and interact with industry.

Four of those elite students are being hosted by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in the Mathematics and Computer Science and Chemistry and Biochemistry departments.

It's all part of a new program called Mitacs Globalink, which was launched to attract international undergraduate students to the province and promote the benefits of a Canadian education to those pursuing graduate degrees.

"Every year, tens of thousands of future entrepreneurs and scientists from India travel abroad to countries like the U.S. or U.K. for graduate studies," says Arvind Gupta, Scientific Director of Mitacs, a leading national research organization that creates innovation research and training programs for up-and-coming researchers.

"Our message to international students is that Canada has world-class universities that provide superior education and innovative collaborative research opportunities. We also have some great companies interested in working with these students to help commercialize their ideas into the new products of tomorrow."

Mitacs has launched this one-of-a-kind program in the province with the support of the Government of Alberta, which has provided $375,000 towards the program.

"During my stay in Alberta, I have been able to interact with Canadian graduate and undergraduate students which has been very enlightening and informative," says Anupam Srivastava, a student from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad who is at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge this summer.

"I would surely recommend the Globalink program to my friends back in India."

The Hon. Greg Weadick, Minister of Alberta Advanced Education and Technology and MLA, Lethbridge West says that programs such as Globalink help position Alberta as a world-leading research and innovation destination.

"We are thrilled to host these young international leaders in Alberta," says Weadick. "Bringing smart people into our Campus Alberta system is essential to building Alberta's knowledge-based economy, and we want these students to come back to Alberta for future studies, and to implement their skills and knowledge here."

At the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, the students have jumped right in to their various projects.

"We have been very pleased to host our Globalink students, and are learning from them as much as they are learning from us," says Dr. Jackie Rice, a mathematics and computer science researcher who is working with a student on a project which uses genetic algorithms to try and reduce the size of reversible logic circuits.

Her colleagues Dr. Yllias Chali and Dr. Shahadat Hossain are also supervising students, while another student is working with chemistry and biochemistry researcher Dr. Ute Kothe.

"We hope they will return home with new friends and contacts, and a different perspective on how their future education could include Canada and the U of L," says Rice.

The Globalink program was piloted in 2009 when 17 Indian students spent three months at British Columbia universities.

This year, Mitacs has placed top students from India in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, and expanded Globalink programming to students from China and Brazil for the first time.

The Globalink program also goes beyond the classroom, Gupta explains, by providing "a big picture taste for life in Canada.

"As part of the internship, for example, the students spend time working alongside their Canadian counterparts to understand Canadian culture and how easy it is for them to fit in, he says. "Our goal is to have these students interact with Alberta students and form new friendships that will extend well beyond their three months in the province."

"In order to be an international innovation leader, Canada must become an attractor for global talent, ensuring that we can compete effectively with other leading jurisdictions," says Gupta. "Building these types of linkages to India is a key part of that strategy."

Unassuming academic

trevor.kenney — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:15:47 +0000

Reality for Chad Befus (BSc '08, MSc '10) came from looking into the eyes of his co-workers, on a frigid Arctic work site toward the end of another 16-hour day. He needed to go to school.

"In the Arctic, when you're out there working what seems like a never-ending day in minus-60 degree weather, you get that feeling you need to go do something else," says Befus, whose indirect route to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge included a work stint in the seismic trade after graduating from Calgary's William Aberhart High School.

"It was long hours and very hard work. There were guys working there, and they were very impressive people, who were 60 years old – I just didn't want to be them at 60."

So he looked south to the U of L and, taking the advice of friends who'd said he was always "good with computers", and threw himself into computer science with a determination steeled by his time in the workforce.

"My time away from school is what told me I needed to come to university and do my bachelor's degree," he says. "It also drove me to work so hard to complete it."

Alumnus Chad Befus had multiple opportunities to stay in the work world but he kept coming back to school.

A second work experience sent Befus back to school once more, this time to complete his master's degree. He says he doesn't need a third reality check, having already been accepted into a PhD program at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of London. The academic world is where Befus plans to stay.

"I was fortunate enough to do a co-op program with Shell Canada in my fourth year and it was an excellent experience," says Befus, who was offered a full-time job as a result.

"I likely could have spent the rest of my life there as a programmer, but I didn't find it especially challenging. It gave me yet another perspective and drove me back into university."

The U of L hooked Befus very early in his post-secondary career.

"One of my first classes was with Dr. Yllias Chali. He has such a spark of enthusiasm for his work that all the kids in his class are just drawn in by him," says Befus. "He is so exciting and interesting, and I give him a great deal of credit because that first class at university was so fun and so interesting, that appeal just stuck with me."

When seeking a graduate program, students are often advised to look beyond the confines of the school at which they earned their bachelor's degree. Befus, having built a rapport with his professors, respectfully ignored that counsel.

"For me, the idea of working for some stranger, not knowing what I'd be working on or what environment I'd be in, just didn't appeal to me," he says. "I wanted to come back and work for one of the professors that I did know, who would challenge me and give me enough leash to be able to go out and do the tasks."

Befus' research interest is in music information retrieval, essentially applying computers to music. As a computer scientist his work is on the systemic side of the equation, how to make computers more accurately represent music. It's not a one-discipline problem however, and Befus says his exposure to the artistic and psychological components have given him a more complete approach.

"I know people who have gone to other universities who stick to their respective areas, and they become very good in those areas. Here you're forced to take different disciplines as an undergraduate, things such as psychology courses, social science courses, art courses, and that's what I find really interesting. I like to go out of my box," he says.

He credits that interdisciplinary approach for enhancing his critical thinking skills.

"If you've got a breadth of knowledge, you can come at a solution from a direction that nobody else will," Befus says. "Somebody coming from a background in music might approach the same problem differently than someone from computer science or psychology. The U of L has helped me see that interdisciplinary areas of research are much more interesting."

It also contributed to his finding a PhD opportunity with Dr. Geraint Wiggins at Goldsmiths' College at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of London.

"From what I've read of his work, his department is very connected with the other aspects of this field, you'll see all three areas represented," says Befus. "I have experience with that and it's what interests me."

He admits the experience will once again take him out of his comfort zone. London is a long way from the U of L and his hometown of Calgary, and even further from his time in the Arctic.

"Back then I wanted to work on cars or something like that, being a doctor seemed out of this world to me because you had to be a brain to do that," he laughs.

"I've never done anything quite like this. It's going a little bit further than I'm used to, so it should be interesting."

GET THE FACTS

· Befus has an older brother currently pursuing his master's in earth sciences at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary.

· His mother was born in Lethbridge and has a nursing degree from the U of C, while his father has a bachelor's degree from the U of C and a law degree from ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Victoria.

· Befus met his PhD supervisor after earning the right to present a paper at the International Computer Music Conference in New York.

· He earned his studentship at ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of London after winning one of three spots from among 80 applicants.

· He describes the practical applications of his research by saying, "The idea is we can do things like search or classify music better, simply because we can get a more accurate representation of music itself at a workable level."

Unassuming academic

trevor.kenney — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:16:09 +0000

Reality for Chad Befus (BSc '08, MSc '10) came from looking into the eyes of his co-workers, on a frigid Arctic work site toward the end of another 16-hour day. He needed to go to school.

"It was long hours and very hard work. There were guys working there, and they were very impressive people, who were 60 years old – I just didn't want to be them at 60."

"My time away from school is what told me I needed to come to university and do my bachelor's degree," he says. "It also drove me to work so hard to complete it."

"I was fortunate enough to do a co-op program with Shell Canada in my fourth year and it was an excellent experience," says Befus, who was offered a full-time job as a result.

"I likely could have spent the rest of my life there as a programmer, but I didn't find it especially challenging. It gave me yet another perspective and drove me back into university."

The U of L hooked Befus very early in his post-secondary career.

"One of my first classes was with Dr. Yllias Chali. He has such a spark of
enthusiasm for his work that all the kids in his class are just drawn in by him," says Befus. "He is so exciting and interesting, and I give him a great deal of credit because that first class at university was so fun and so interesting, that appeal just stuck with me."

He credits that interdisciplinary approach for enhancing his critical thinking skills.

It also contributed to his finding a PhD opportunity with Dr. Geraint Wiggins at Goldsmiths' College at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of London.

He admits the experience will once again take him out of his comfort zone. London is a long way from the U of L and his hometown of Calgary, and even further from his time in the Arctic.

"Back then I wanted to work on cars or something like that, being a doctor seemed out of this world to me because you had to be a brain to do that," he laughs.

"I've never done anything quite like this. It's going a little bit further than I'm used to, so it should be interesting."

GET THE FACTS

• Befus has an older brother currently pursuing his master's in earth sciences at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary.

• His mother was born in Lethbridge and has a nursing degree from the U of C, while his father has a bachelor's degree from the U of C and a law degree from ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Victoria.

• Befus met his PhD supervisor after earning the right to present a paper at the International Computer Music Conference in New York.

• He earned his studentship at ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of London after winning one of three spots from among 80 applicants.

• He describes the practical applications of his research by saying, "The idea is we can do things like search or classify music better, simply because we can get a more accurate representation of music itself at a workable level."

Answering complex questions

trevor.kenney — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:20:54 +0000

Although Google has become a verb for most of us, the search engine has its limitations: ask it for the impacts of the current global financial crisis in different parts of the world for example, and you can expect to sift through thousands of results for the answer.

Under the guidance of his supervisor, Dr. Yllias Chali, Sadid Hasan, a U of L Master of Science (Computer Science) student, is assisting in the development of a more intelligent way of searching the Internet – or any large collection of documents. Complex question answering, as it's called, creates summaries of large volumes of information as answers to complex questions, rather than simply offering a listing of sources.

"We are researching a kind of search where we can ask questions and the answer will be available right away to the user," explains Hasan, who came to the U of L from Bangladesh to work with Chali.

His master's research project involves developing and testing software that applies complex question answering techniques to a collection of newspaper articles.

"I'm using machine learning techniques to generate summarization models."

Chali has been working in this area for nearly a decade. Hasan, like all of Chali's graduate students, was assigned a specific project related to his research program and carefully guided through the process.

"I try to give the students as much direction as possible to allow them to gain research skills quickly."

Hasan is one year into his program but has already published a couple of papers and earned one of four $15,000 School of Graduate Studies Fellowships. His success is the product of talent, but also tenacity, says Chali.

"Sadid has great research potential; he's very hard-working."

UNews - Yllias Chali

��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers successful in securing NSERC funding support

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��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers successful in securing NSERC funding support