Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
The sky’s the limit: Advancing CIFAR’s program in Cosmology & Gravity
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canada-based global research institute pursuing knowledge that will transform our world. CIFAR addresses humanity’s grand challenges and opportunities by connecting top-tier interdisciplinary networks of the world’s visionary research leaders. CIFAR convenes 14 global research networks to create transformative knowledge in areas as diverse as artificial intelligence, the origins of the universe, sustainable energy, and human health.
For the past decade, the R. Howard Webster Foundation has supported CIFAR’s program in Cosmology & Gravity, which unites leading astronomers and astrophysicists to collaboratively undertake the high-risk, high-reward research needed to reveal the structure and evolution of the universe – from the dawn of its existence to its ultimate fate. Cosmology & Gravity has raised Canada’s global profile in the field; fellows in the program have contributed to the development of state-of-the-art technology such as the CHIME telescope, which will measure the acceleration of the universe to deepen knowledge of dark energy, and to breakthrough findings such as new pulsars, which shed light on the evolution of neutron stars.
The Foundation’s support for CIFAR has contributed to the work of leading astrophysicist and R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellow Victoria Kaspi (McGill University). In 2016, Dr. Kaspi was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest level within the order, and received the highest accolade given to Canadian scientists: the Gerhard Herzberg Gold Medal. She is also director of the new McGill Space Institute.
Following its scheduled review process, the Cosmology and Gravity program was successfully renewed for a 5-year term and renamed Gravity and the Extreme Universe to reflect the new vision for research under the Dr. Kaspi leadership as Program Director. With the refocused program, Dr. Kaspi will lead an evolving group of CIFAR fellows to address profound questions about the nature of extreme gravity and other fundamental physics and astrophysics, using revolutionary new methods in gravitational wave detection together with advanced electromagnetic and particle experiments and observations.
As Dr. Kaspi and her collaborators continue to make new discoveries in the extreme universe, we are pleased to share some of them on our website.Please see the link below.
https://www.cifar.ca/cifarnews/2017/10/16/cifar-fellows-part-of-first-gravitational-wave-detection-of-colliding-neutron-stars
To learn more about Gravity and the Extreme Universe and Dr. Kaspi, please visit: https://www.cifar.ca/research/programs/gravity-extreme-universe