BrainsCAN Support keeping talent at Western

Project support from BrainsCAN has led to additional funding and research collaborations, giving Western University’s scientists an edge as they build their careers.

“Working with BrainsCAN has had a tremendous impact on our research, particularly for our pregnancy studies,” says Emma Duerden, assistant professor at Western University and Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience and Learning Disorders. “The funding from BrainsCAN really supported some of the very initial phases of the research.”

The funding has supported personnel, training opportunities, and the establishment of pipelines, protocols and standard operating procedure – which in turn also supported up-and-coming trainees.

“I almost had to quit science and that’s absolutely not what I wanted. It’s what I care about the most,” says Emily Nichols, research scientist in the Faculty of Education at Western University. “BrainsCAN allowed me to pursue that.”

It also supported high-risk, high-reward research, and in supporting new investigators, helped create opportunities for young scientists and trainees. Without this type of funding, getting pilot data needed for larger, more established grants can be very difficult

“I feel fortunate to have received this funding,” Duerden says. “And as a result, we received additional funding from other foundations and tri-council agencies. So, it essentially ignited the research program.”

BrainsCAN’s flexible and nimble funding structure was a real boon to the university’s research community, adds Marc Joanisse, a scientist and professor in Western University’s psychology department and part of the Brain and Mind Institute.

“The BrainsCAN money turned into CIHR money in a very transparent way,” he says, allowing projects to evolve and change techniques and strategies over time.

Nichols adds, “One of the crucial things is that BrainsCAN had a lot of flexibility in how it funded, and that allowed for some interesting projects, for some really interesting people, to go in directions that might not have otherwise been possible.”

BrainsCAN also supported specialized resources and expertise that made conducting research easier.

During her time as a lab coordinator with BrainsCAN at Western, Nicolette Noonan worked to support researchers with technical expertise and training of new students and colleagues joining their labs.

“(Principal investigators) didn’t necessarily need to have that expertise, and they could have somebody come in and, in a uniform way, train all the students and prepare them to help carry out the research,” she says. “We really were uniquely positioned having all these shared resources.”

It takes time to learn to use specialized devices, so having an expert with clear protocols in place meant that it was a time-saver for researchers, gave students useful skills, and produced high-quality data.

“In terms of research cost, it’s a really efficient way to run the institution, and if that takes one person training everyone to make sure those standards are upheld, I do think that’s a good use of money.”

BrainsCAN also encouraged researchers to “think bigger and look outwards” when planning, Joanisse says, creating a cooperative scientific community.

“Building a team where there are different kinds of experts, and trying to get those experts who are collaborators on these projects to think big about what we could do with a larger data collection effort and a combination of modalities,” was a result of the support

It also meant the ability to attract and retain graduate scholars with new perspectives, “to bring in post-docs that were not just another mini version of me, but would actually extend across a few different domains,” Joanisse says, “and who’ve allowed me to do a lot that I wouldn’t otherwise have done.”