Canada - Collaboration

Oxford academics work collaboratively with their Canadian colleagues across a broad range of disciplines. In all of Oxford’s published research, Canada provides the 6th largest concentration of Oxford international co-authors. The University of Toronto is the University’s second most frequent international collaborator and McGill University in Montreal is 10th. 

The Structural Genomics Consortium is a public-private partnership led by Oxford and the University of Toronto, along with the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. It is a not-for-profit organization that aims to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins of medical relevance, and place them in the public domain without restriction for anybody to access and use in their medical research with the aim of enabling new drug discoveries.

During the first phase of the project, more than 450 protein structures were deposited in the Protein Data Bank. In its second funding phase SGC aims to determine more than 650 new structures. The project focuses on proteins with relevance to human health comprising proteins associated with diabetes, cancer, genetic and epigenetic disease as well as with infectious diseases such as malaria.

A new COMPAS project: “The Role of Migrant Health and Social Care Workers in Ageing Societies: Planning for the Future”, is an international, collaborative research project which includes partners from Oxford and Canada, among others. The project examines the current demand and future need for migrant care workers in the context of ageing societies.

The research explores the employment of migrant workers in the delivery of health and social care for older people in the UK, the USA, Ireland, and Canada. It considers the factors influencing demand for migrant care workers; the views and experiences of migrant care workers, employers, and older people; and the impact of the regulation of migration and of the care sector.

The international researchers are from Oxford (COMPAS, Oxford Institute of Ageing) and McMaster University (in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) as well as Georgetown University and National University of Ireland.

In the medical sciences, Neurogeneticists at Oxford’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics are collaborating with colleagues at British Colombia University in a Canadian Collaborative Project on Genetic Susceptibility to Multiple Sclerosis (CCPGSMS). CCPGSMS is a cross-Canada study involving 15 Multiple Sclerosis (MS) clinics and potentially more than 20,000 MS patients and their family members.

The Ebers group in Oxford is studying in detail the single gene that in previous studies has consistently been correlated with occurrences of multiple sclerosis using a large database of DNA from thousands of families with MS. They have recently published results showing evidence that it is a combination of genetic and environmental factors that can cause MS.

Oxford’s research links with Canada do not just focus on the future, but also on the distant past. Researchers at Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences are working with colleagues from Memorial University of Newfoundland on the nature of the earliest animals from the Proterozoic to Cambrian periods. The Oxford group, who work with Dr Duncan McIlroy at Memorial, frequently visit Newfoundland’s Ediacaran successions where a huge ash cloud from a volcanic eruption preserved some of the earliest examples of animal life on earth. 

Another collaboration between Oxford and Memorial University is the Avalonian Research Group, which was set up to study the Proterozoic through to the Ordovician periods. Strata of the common geological terrain in the UK and in Newfoundland, called “Avalonian”, are critical for understanding the origin and early evolution of animal life. One of the main goals of the Avalonian Research Group is to aid transatlantic work on these important rocks and fossils.

In earth sciences, Oxford scientists have boarded two Canadian coastguard vessels in the far northern regions of Canada, an area which is extremely difficult to travel to due to ice conditions, strong winds and fog. The team is measuring freshwater levels in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Along with the ship’s crew who are almost all Canadian, the expedition includes scientists and technicians from the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Canada.

Researchers from Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University and from the National Research Council of Canada in collaboration with the National University of Singapore have been investigating the quantum state of ‘entanglement’. In particular, in December 2011 the team reported that they had managed to recreate the state between two separated diamonds at room temperature, a feat never before achieved outside of a climate at absolute zero and previously thought to be unobservable in those conditions. This early result could go on to have important consequences for quantum computing, communications and electronic encryption.

In June 2012, a team led by Simon Fraser University, Canada and featuring scientists from Oxford’s Department of Materials announced that it had managed to sustain this quantum state, this time in the material silicon, for a total three minutes and 12 seconds, over 100 times longer than the record of 1.75 seconds previously achieved. Given that silicon hosts most modern computing, the prospect that the same material might enable quantum computing could have major implications for future computing.

Research at Oxford is also supported by a number of prominent Canadian funding bodies. The Lupina Foundation supports a research study in the Department of Psychiatry into the efficacy of mindfulness based cognitive therapy in the treatment of severe health anxiety (the persistent fear or belief that one has a serious, undiagnosed medical illness).

In addition to their funding of the Oxford North American studies programme, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada has supported two initiatives in the Department of Politics and International Relations: The Global Economic Governance (GEG) Programme which supports research and fosters debate into how global markets and institutions can better serve the needs of people in developing countries, and the Human Development and Capability Network led by Dr Sabina Alkire in the Department of International Development. This Network promotes multidisciplinary research on problems related to impoverishment, justice and well-being, and has more than 700 members across 70 countries.