Minister Responsible for Innovation Saskatchewan Tina Beaudry-Mellor announced on Tuesday $11.6 million in new funding over the next five years for the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation.
“Research supported by the Fedoruk Centre places Saskatchewan among global leaders in areas of nuclear innovation,” Beaudry-Mellor said in a news release.
“With investments like these, we will continue to attract world-class researchers to Saskatchewan by providing facilities that allow them to work at the cutting edge of nuclear science and technology in medicine, energy and the environment.”
“We are grateful for financial support from the provincial and federal governments,” Fedoruk Centre Executive Director John Root said in the release. “Their investments in innovation at the Fedoruk Centre, combined with income from other sectors, are helping to strengthen Saskatchewan’s place as a global leader in nuclear research, development and training.”
The new Innovation Wing, which opened Tuesday, is key to developing treatments for cancer and other diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, the province says. It is also home to the new BioPETx, a real-time imaging detector which is the first of its kind in Canada and was invented in Saskatchewan.
Access to a cyclotron, synchrotron, and phytotron, along with the BioPETx, will advance agricultural knowledge and technologies and strengthen global food security by improving crop yields and resilience to weather, the province says.
The new five-year funding agreement with the province replaces one that expired at the end of March 2019 and brings the total provincial government funding to the Fedoruk Centre to $45.4 million since 2012, the province says.
